I PR 4168 
.G33 

1 1891 
Copy 2 




Gass- 
Book. 



Cr 



LIFE OF 



HARLOTTE BRONTE 



CONDENSED EROM MRS. GASKELVS 
UEE OE CHARLOTTE BRON'IE 



BY 

T. M. C. 



NEW YORK 
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

(successors to JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY) 

142 to 150 WORTH STREET 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE 



LIFE OF 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 



CONDENSED FROM MRS. GASKELVS 
LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE 



T. M. C. i^^ 






NEW YORK 
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

(successors to JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY) 

142 to 150 WORTH STREET 



fK 4-/^^ 



^'\,^ 






Copyrighted, i8gi, 

BY 

THE MERSHON COMPANY.- 






Life of Charlotte Bronte. 



CHAPTER I. 

The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the 
road to Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as 
the traveler journeys upward to the gray round hills that seem 
to bound his journey of four miles. 

For a short distance the road appears to turn away from 
Haworth, as it winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill ; 
but then it crosses a bridge over the ^^ beck," and the ascent 
through the village begins. The flagstones with which it is 
paved are placed end-ways, in order to give a better hold to 
the horses' feet ; and, even with this help, they seem to be in 
constant danger of slipping backward. The old stone houses 
are high compared to the width of the street, which makes an 
abrupt turn before reaching the more level ground at the head 
of the village, so that the steep aspect of the place, in one part, 
is almost like that of a wall. But this surmounted, the church 
lies a little off the main road on the left, a hundred yards or 
so, and the driver relaxes his care, and the horses breathe more 
easily, as they pass into the quiet little by-street that leads to 
Haworth Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of this 
lane, the schoolhouse and the sexton's dwelling (where the 
curates formerly lodged) on the other. 

The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing 
down upon the church ; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and 
belfried schoolhouse, form three sides of an irregular oblong, 
of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors that lie be- 
yond. 

The little church lies above most of the houses in the 
village ; and the graveyard rises above the church, and 
is terribly full of upright tombstones. The chapel or church 
claims greater antiquity than any other in that part of 
the kingdom ; but there is no appearance of this in the 
external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the two 
eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower 



4 tlFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

part of the steeple. Inside, the character of the pillars shows 
that they were constructed before the reign of Henry VII. 

The interior of the church is commonplace ; it is neither old 
enough nor modern enough to compel notice. The pews are 
of black oak, with high divisions ; and the names of those to 
whom they belong are painted in white letters on the doors. 
There are neither brasses, nor altar-tombs, nor monuments, 
but there is a mural tablet on the right-hand side of the com- 
munion-table, bearing the following inscription : 

HERE 
LIE THE REMAINS OF 

MARIA BRONTE, WIFE 

OF THE 

REV. P. BRONTE, A. B., MINISTER OF HAWORTH. 

HER SOUL 

DEPARTED TO THE SAVIOUR, SEPT. I5TH, 182I, 

IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE. 

** Be ye also ready : for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." — Mat- 
thew xxiv. 44. 

ALSO HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF 

MARIA BRONTE, DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID; 

SHE DIED ON THE 

6tH of may, 1825, IN THE I2TH YEAR OF HER AGE ; 

AND OF 

ELIZABETH BRONTE, HER SISTER; 

WHO DIED JUNE I5TH, 1825, IN THE IITH YEAR OF HER AGE. 

*' Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew xviii. 3. 

HERE ALSO LIE THE REMAINS OF 

PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTE, 

WHO DIED SEPT. 24TH, 1 848, AGED 30 YEARS ; 
AND OF 

EMILY JANE BRONTE, 

WHO DIED DEC. I9TH, 1848, AGED 29 YEARS, 

SON AND DAUGHTER OF THE 

REV. P. BRONTE, INCUMBENT. 

THIS STONE IS ALSO DEDICATED TO THE 

MEMORY OF ANNE BRONTJE,* 

YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTE, A. B. 

SHE DIED, AGED 27 YEARS, MAY 28tH, 1849, 

AND WAS BURIED AT THE OLD CHURCH, SCARBORO*. 

* A reviewer pointed out the discrepancy between the age (twenty-seven 
years) assigned, on the mural tablet, to Anne Bronte at the time of her death 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. J 

At the upper part of this tablet ample space is allowed 
between the lines of the inscription ; when the first memorials 
were written down, the survivors, in their fond affection, 
thought little of the margin and verge they were leaving for 
those who were still living. But as one dead member of the 
household follows another fast to the grave, the lines are 
pressed together, and the letters become small and cramped. 
After the record of Anne's death, there is room for no other. 

But one more of that generation — the last of that nursery 
of six little motherless children — was yet to follow, before the 
survivor, the childless and widowed father, found his rest. On 
another tablet, below the first, the following record has been 
added to that mournful list : 

ADJOINING LIE THE REMAINS OF 

CHARLOTTE, WIFE 

OF THE 

REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS, A. B. 

AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTE, A. B., INCUMBENT. 

SHE DIED MARCH 3 1 ST, 1 85 5, IN THE 39TH 

YEAR OF HER AGE. 

The Rev. Patrick Bronte was a native of the County Down in 
Ireland. His father, Hugh Bronte, was left an orphan at an 
early age. He came from the south to the north of the island, 
and settled in the parish of Ahaderg, near Loughbrickland. 
There was some family tradition that, humble as Hugh 
Bronte's circumstances were, he was the descendant of an an- 
cient family. But about this neither he nor his descendants 
have cared to inquire. He made an early marriage, and reared 
and educated ten children on the proceeds of the few acres of 
land which he farmed. This large family were remarkable for 
great physical strength, and much personal beauty. Even in 

in 1849, and the alleged fact that she was born at Thornton, from which 
place Mr. Bronte removed on February 25, 1820. I was aware of the dis- 
crepancy, but I did not think it of sufficient consequence to be rectified by 
an examination of the reg-ister of births. Mr. Bronte's own words, on which 
I grounded my statement as to the time of Anne Bronte's birth, are as 
follows : 

" In Thornton, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane, and Anne were 
born." And such of the inhabitants of Haworth as have spoken on the sub- 
ject say that all the children of Mr. and Mrs. Bronte were born before they 
removed to Haworth. There is probably some mistake in the inscription on 
the tablet. 



6 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

his old age, Mr. Bronte was a striking-looking man, above the 
common height, with a nobly shaped head and erect carriage. 
In his youth he must have been unusually handsome. 

He was born on Patrickmas day (March 17), 1777, and early 
gave tokens of extraordinary quickness and intelligence. He 
had also his full share of ambition ; and of his strong sense 
and forethought there is a proof in the fact, that, knowing that 
his father could afford him no pecuniary aid, and that he must 
depend upon his own exertions, he opened a public school at 
the early age of sixteen ; and this mode of living he continued 
to follow for five or six years. He then became a tutor in the 
family of the Rev. Mr. Tighe, rector of Drumgooland parish. 
Thence he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, where 
he was entered in July, 1802, being at the time five-and-twenty 
years of age. After nearly four years' residence, he obtained 
his B. A. degree, and was ordained to a curacy in Essex, 
whence he removed into Yorkshire. The course of life, of 
which this is the outline, shows a powerful and remarkable 
character, originating and pursuing a purpose in a resolute 
and independent manner. Here is a youth — a boy of sixteen 
— separating himself from his family, and determining to main- 
tain himself ; and that not in the hereditary manner, by agri- 
cultural pursuits, but by the labor of his brain. 

I suppose, from what I have heard, that Mr. Tighe became 
strongly interested in his children's tutor, and may have aided 
him, not only in the direction of his studies, but in the sugges- 
tion of an English university education, and in advice as to 
the mode in which he should obtain entrance there. Mr. 
Bronte has now no trace of his Irish origin remaining in his 
speech ; he never could have shown his Celtic descent in the 
straight Greek lines and long oval of his face ; but at five-and- 
twenty, fresh from the only life he had ever known, to present 
himself at the gates of St. John's proved no little determina- 
tion of will and scorn of ridicule. 

While at Cambridge, he became one of a corps of volunteers, 
who were then being called out all over the country to resist 
the apprehended invasion by the French. I have heard him 
allude, in later years, to Lord Palmerston as one who had often 
been associated with him then in the mimic military duties 
which they had to perform. 

We take him up now, settled as a curate at Hartshead, in 
Yorkshire — far removed from his birthplace and all his Irish 
connections ; with whom, indeed, he cared little to keep up 
any intercourse, and whom he never, I believe, revisited after 
becoming a student at Cambridge. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. • 7 

Hartshead is a very small village, lying to the east of Hud- 
dersfield and Halifax ; and, from its high situation — on a 
mound, as it were, surrounded by a circular basin — command- 
ing a magnificent view. Mr. Bronte resided here for five 
years ; and, while the incumbent of Hartshead, he wooed and 
married Maria Branwell. 

She was the third daughter of Mr. Thomas Branwell, mer- 
chant, of Penzance. Her mother's maiden name was Carne ; 
and, both on father's and mother's side, the Branwell family 
were sufficiently well descended to enable them to mix in the 
best society that Penzance then afforded. Mr. and Mrs. Bran- 
well would be living — their family of four daughters and one 
son, still children — during the existence of that primitive state 
of society which is well described by Dr. Davy in the life of 
his brother. 

Mr. Branwell, the father, according to his descendants' ac- 
count, was a man of musical talent. He and his wife lived to 
see all their children grown up, and died within a year of each 
other, — he in 1808, she in 1809, — when their daughter Maria 
w^as twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. I have been per- 
mitted to look over a series of nine letters, which were ad- 
dressed by her to Mr. Bronte during the brief term of their 
engagement in 1812. They are full of tender grace of expres- 
sion- and feminine modesty ; pervaded by the deep piety to 
which I have alluded as a family characteristic. I shall make 
one or two extracts from them to show what sort of a person 
was the mother of Charlotte Bronte ; but first, I must state the 
circumstances under which this Cornish lady met the scholar 
from Ahaderg, near Loughbrickland. In the early summer of 
181 2, when she would be twenty-nine, she came to visit her 
uncle, the Reverend John Fennel, who was at that time a 
clergyman of the Church of England, living near Leeds, but 
who had previously been a Methodist minister. Mr. Bronte 
was the incumbent of Hartshead, and had the reputation in 
the neighborhood of being a very handsome fellow, full of 
Irish enthusiasm, and with something of an Irishman's capa- 
bility of falling easily in love. Miss Branwell was extremely 
small in person, not pretty, but very elegant ; and always 
dressed with a quiet simplicity of taste, which accorded well 
with her general character, and of which some of the details 
call to mind the style of dress preferred by her daughter for 
her favorite heroines. - Mr. Bronte was soon captivated by the 
little, gentle creature, and this time declared that it was for 
life. In her first letter to him, dated August 26, she seems 
almost surprised to find herself engaged, and alludes to the 



8 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

short time which she has known him. In the rest there are 
touches reminding one of Juliet's 

But trust me, grentleman, I'll prove more true 
Than those that have more cunning to be strange. 

There are plans for happy picnic parties to Kirkstall Abbey, 
in the glowing September days. *^ Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin 
Jane " — the last engaged to a Mr. Morgan, another clergy- 
man — were of the party ; all since dead, except Mr. Bronte. 
There was no opposition on the part of any of her friends to 
her engagement. Mr. and Mrs. Fennel sanctioned it, and her 
brother and sisters in far-away Penzance appear fully to have 
approved of it. In a letter dated September i8, she says : 

" For some years I have been perfectly my own mistress, 
subject to no control whatever ; so far from it, that my sisters, 
Avho are many years older than myself, and even my dear 
mother, used to consult me on every occasion of importance, 
and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and 
actions ; perhaps you will be ready to accuse me of vanity in 
mentioning this, but you must consider that I do not boast of 
it. I have many times felt it a disadvantage, and although, I 
thank God, it has never led me into error, yet, in circum- 
stances of uncertainty and doubt, I have deeply felt the want 
of a guide and instructor." In the same letter she tells Mr. 
Bronte that she has informed her sisters of her engagement, 
and that she should not see them again so soon as she had in- 
tended. Mr. Fennel, her uncle, also writes to them, by the 
same post, in praise of Mr. Bronte. 

The journey from Penzance to Leeds in those days was both 
very long and very expensive ; the lovers had not much money 
to spend in unnecessary traveling, and, as Miss Bran well had 
neither father nor mother living, it appeared both a discreet 
and seemly arrangement that the marriage should take place 
from her uncle's house. There was no reason either why the 
engagement shouTd be prolonged. They were past their 
first youth ; they had means sufficient for their unambitious 
wants ; the living of Hartshead is rated in the Clergy List at 
^202 per annum, and she was in the receipt of a small an- 
nuity (^50 I have been told) by the will of her father. So, at 
the end of September, the lovers began to talk about taking a 
house, for I suppose that Mr. Bronte up to that time had been in 
lodgings ; and all went smoothly and successfully with a view 
to their marriage in the ensuing winter, until November, when 
a misfortune happened, which she thus patiently and prettily 
describes : 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 9 

^* I suppose you never expected to be much the richer for 
me, but I am sorry to inform you that I am still poorer than I 
thought myself. I mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, 
etc. On Saturday evening, about the time when you were 
writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, I was 
reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having then re- 
ceived a letter from my sister giving me an account of the ves- 
sel in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast 
of Devonshire, in consequence of which the box was dashed 
to pieces with the violence of the sea, all my little prop- 
erty, with the exception of a very few articles, being swallowed 
up in the mighty deep. If this should not prove the prelude 
to something worse, I shall think little of it, as it is the first 
disastrous circumstance which has occurred since I left my 
home.'* 

The last of these letters is dated December the 5th. Miss 
Branwell and her cousin intended to set about making the 
wedding-cake in the following week, so the marriage could not 
be far off. She had been learning by heart a " pretty little 
hymiU " of Mr. Bronte's composing ; and reading Lord Lyt- 
telton's "Advice to a Lady," on which she makes some per- 
tinent and just remarks, showing that she thought as well as 
read. And so Maria Branwell fades out of sight ; we have no 
more direct intercourse with her; we hear of her as Mrs. 
Bronte, but it is as an invalid, not far from death ; still patient, 
cheerful, and pious. The writing of these letters is elegant 
and neat ; while there are allusions to household occupations — 
such as making the wedding-cake — there are also allusions to 
the books she has read, or is reading, showing a well-cultivated 
mind. Without having anything of her daughter's rare tal- 
ents, Mrs. Bronte must have been, I imagine, that unusual 
character, a well-balanced and consistent woman. The style 
of the letters is easy and good ; as is also that of a paper 
from the same hand, entitled '* The Advantages of Poverty in 
Religious Concerns," which was written rather later, with a 
view to publication in some periodical. 

She was married, from her uncle's house, in Yorkshire, on 
the 29th of December, 181 2 ; the same day was also the wed- 
ding-day of her younger sister, Charlotte Branwell, in distant 
Penzance. I do not think that Mrs. Bronte ever revisited 
Cornwall, but she has left a very pleasant impression on the 
minds of those relations who yet survive : they speak of her as 
*' their favorite aunt, and one to whom they, as well as all the 
family, looked up, as a person of talent and great amiability of 
disposition ; " and again, as " meek and retiring, while pos- 



lO LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

sessing more than ordinary talents, which she inherited from 
her father, and her piety was genuine and unobtrusive." 

Mr. Bronte remained for five years at Hartshead, in the par- 
ish of Dewsbury. There he was married, and his two chil- 
dren, Maria and Elizabeth, were born. At the expiration of 
that period, he had the living of Thornton, in Bradford parish. 

Here, at Thornton, Charlotte Bronte was born, on the 21st 
of April, 1816. Fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, 
Emily Jane, and Anne. After the birth of this last daughter, 
Mrs. Bronte's health began to decline. It is hard work to 
provide for the little tender wants of many young children 
where the means are but limited. The necessaries of food and 
clothing are much more easily supplied than the almost equal 
necessaries of attendance, care, soothing, amusement, and sym- 
pathy. Maria Bronte, the eldest of six, could only have been 
a few months more than six years old, when Mr. Bronte re- 
moved to Haworth, on February 25, 1820. Those who knew 
her then describe her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet to a de- 
gree far beyond her years. Her childhood was no childhood ; 
the cases are rare in which the possessors of great gifts have 
known the blessings of that careless, happy time ; their unu- 
sual powers stir within them, and, instead of the natural life of 
perception — the objective, as the Germans call it — they begin 
the deeper life of reflection — the subjective. 

Little Maria Bronte was delicate and small, in appearance, 
which seemed to give greater effect to her wonderful precocity 
of intellect. She must have been her mother's companion and 
helpmate in many a household and nursery experience, for Mr. 
Bronte was, of course, much engaged in his study ; and, be- 
sides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their fre- 
quent appearance on the scene both as a drag on his wife's 
strength and as an interruption to the comfort of the house- 
hold. 

Haworth Parsonage is an oblong stone house, facing 
down the hill on which the village stands, and with the 
front door right opposite to the western door of the 
church, distant about a hundred yards. Of this space, 
twenty yards or so in depth are occupied by the grassy 
garden, which is scarcely wider than the house. The grave- 
yard lies on two sides of the house and garden. The house 
consists of four rooms on each floor, and is two stories high. 
When the Brontes took possession, they made the larger 
parlor, to the left of the entrance, the family sitting-room, 
while that on the right w^as appropriated to Mr. Bronte as 
a study. Behind this was the kitchen ; behind the former, a 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. II 

sort of flagged store-room. Upstairs were four bedchambers 
of similar size, with the addition of a small apartment over 
the passage, or " lobby," as we call it in the north. This was 
to the front, the staircase going up right opposite to the en- 
trance. There is the pleasant old fashion of window-seats all 
through the house ; and one can see that the parsonage was 
built in the days when wood was plentiful, as the massive stair- 
banisters and the wainscots and the heavy window-frames 
testify. 

This little extra upstairs room was appropriated to the 
children. Small as it was, it was not called a nursery ; in- 
deed, it had not the comfort of a fireplace in it ; the ser- 
vants — two affectionate, warm-hearted sisters, who cannot now 
speak of the family without tears — called the room the ^^ chil- 
dren's study." The age of the eldest student was perhaps by 
this time seven. 

The people in Haworth were none of them very poor. 
Many of them were employed in the neighboring worsted 
mills ; a few were millowners and manufacturers in a small 
way ; there were also some shopkeepers for the humbler and 
every-day wants ; but for medical advice, for stationery, 
books, law, dress, or dainties, the inhabitants had to go to 
Keighley. 

'' They kept themselves very close,'' is the account given 
by those who remembered Mr. and Mrs. Bronte's coming 
among them. I believe many of the Yorkshiremen would 
object to the system of parochial visiting ; their surly inde^ 
pendence would revolt from the idea of anyone having a right, 
from his office, to inquire into their condition, to counsel, or to 
admonish them. The old hill spirit lingers in them, which 
coined the rhyme, inscribed on the under part of one of the seats 
in the Sedilia of Whalley Abbey, not many miles from Haworth : 

Who mells wi* what another does 
Had best go home and shoe his goose. 

I asked an inhabitant of a district close to Haworth, what sort 
of a clergyman they had at the church which he attended. 

** A rare good one," said he ; ^' he minds his own business, 
and ne'er troubles himself with ours." 

Mr. Bronte was faithful in visiting the sick, and all those 
who sent for him, and diligent in attendance at the schools ; 
and so was his daughter Charlotte, too ; but, cherishing and 
valuing privacy themselves, they were, perhaps, over-delicate 
in not intruding upon the privacy of others. 

From their first going to Haworth, their walks were directed 



12 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

rather out toward the heathery moors, sloping upward behind 
the parsonage, than toward the long, descending village street. 
A good old woman, who came to nurse Mrs. Bronte in the ill- 
ness — an internal cancer — which grew and gathered upon her, 
not many months after her arrival at Haworth, tells me that at 
that time the six little creatures used to walk out, hand in 
hand, toward the glorious wild moors, which in after days they 
loved so passionately ; the elder ones taking thoughtful care 
for the toddling wee things. 

They were grave and silent beyond their years ; subdued, 
probably, by the presence of serious illness in the house ; for, 
at the time which my informant speaks of, Mrs. Bronte was 
confined to the bedroom from which she never came forth 
alive. ^* You would not have known there was a child in the 
house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures. 
Maria would shut herself up " (Maria, but seven !) " in the 
children's study with a newspaper, and be able to tell one 
everything when she came out ; debates in parliament, and I 
don't know what all. She was as good as a mother to her 
sisters and brother. But there never were such good children. 
I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any 
children I had ever seen. They were good little creatures. 
Emily was the prettiest." 

Mrs. Bronte was the same patient, cheerful person as w^e 
have seen her formerly ; very ill, suffering great pain, but 
seldom if ever complaining ; at her better times begging her 
nurse to raise her in bed to let her see her clean the grate, 
" because she did it as it was done in Cornwall " ; devotedly 
fond of her husband, who warmly repaid her affection and 
suffered no one else to take the night nursing ; but, according 
to my informant, the mother was not very anxious to see much 
of her children, probably because the sight of them, knowing 
how soon they were to be left motherless, would have agitated 
her too much. So the little things clung quietly together, for 
their father was busy in his study and in his parish, or with 
their mother, and they took their meals alone ; sat reading, or 
whispering low, in the "children's study," or wandered out on 
the hillside, hand in hand. 

Mr. Bronte wished to make his children hardy, and indiffer- 
ent to the pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he suc- 
ceeded, as far as regarded his daughters. 

His strong, passionate Irish nature was, in general, com- 
pressed down with resolute stoicism ; but it was there notwith- 
standing all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanor; 
though he did not speak when he was annoyed or displeased. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I3 

Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet nature thought invariably of the 
bright side, would say, '' Ought I not to be thankful that he 
never gave me an angry word ? " 

Mrs. Bronte died in September, 182 1, and the lives of those 
quiet children must have become quieter and lonelier still. 
Charlotte tried hard, in after years, to recall the remembrance 
of her mother, and could bring back two or three pictures of 
her. One was when, sometime in the evening light, she had 
been playing with her little boy, Patrick Branwell, in the parlor 
of Havvorth Parsonage. But the recollections of four or live 
years old are of a very fragmentary character. 

Owing to some illness of the digestive organs, Mr. Bronte 
was obliged to be very careful about his diet : and, in order to 
avoid temptation, and possibly to have the quiet necessary for 
digestion, he had begun, before his wife's death, to take his 
dinner alone, — a habit which he always retained. He did not 
require companionship, therefore he did not seek it, either in 
his walks, or in his daily life. The quiet regularity of his 
domestic hours w^as only broken in upon by churchwardens, 
and visitors on parochial business ; and sometimes by a neigh- 
boring clergyman, who came down the hills, across the moors, 
to mount up again to Haworth Parsonage, and spend an even- 
ing there. But, owing to Mrs. Bronte's death so soon after her 
husband had removed into the district, and also to the dis- 
tances and the bleak country to be traversed, the wives of 
these clerical friends did not accompany their husbands ; and 
the daughters grew up out of childhood into girlhood bereft, 
in a singular manner, of all such society as would have been 
natural to their age, sex, and station. 



CHAPTER II. 

About a year after Mrs. Bronte's death, an elder sister came 
from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law's household, 
and look after his children. 

I do not know whether Miss Branwell taught her nieces 
anything besides sewing and the household arts in which 
Charlotte afterward was such an adept. Their regular lessons 
were said to their father ; and they were always in the habit 
of picking up an immense amount of miscellaneous information 
for themselves. But a year or so before this time, a school 
had been begun in the north of England for the daughters of 
clergymen. The place was Cowan Bridge, a small hamlet on 
the coach road between Leeds and Kendal, and thus easy of 



14 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

access from Haworth, as the coach ran daily, and one of its 
stages was at Keighley^ The yearly expense for each pupil 
(according to the entrance-rules given in the Report for 1842, 
and I believe they had not been increased since the establish- 
ment of the schools in 1823) was ^18 a year. 

Mr. Bronte formed the determination to send his daughters 
to Cowan Bridge School ; and he accordingly took Maria and 
Elizabeth thither in July, 1824. 

I now come to a part of my subject which I find great diffi- 
culty in treating, because the evidence relating to it on each 
side is so conflicting that it seems almost impossible to arrive 
at the truth. Miss Bronte more than once said to me, that she 
should not have written what she did of Lowood in ''Jane 
Eyre," if she had thought the place would have been so imme- 
diately identified with Cowan Bridge, although there was not 
a word in her account of the institution but what was true at 
the time when she knew it ; she also said that she had not 
considered it necessary, in a work of fiction, to state every 
particular with the impartiality that might be required in a 
court of justice, nor to seek out motives, and make allowances 
for human failings, as she might have done, if dispassionately 
analyzing the conduct of those who had the superintendence 
of the institution. I believe she herself would have been glad 
of an opportunity to correct the over-strong impression which 
was made upon the public mind by her vivid picture ; though 
even she, suffering her whole life long, both in heart and body, 
from the consequences of what happened there, might have 
been apt, to the last, to take her deep belief in facts for the 
facts themselves — her conception of truth for the absolute truth. 

In some of the notices of the previous editions of this work, 
it is assumed that I derived the greater part of my information 
with regard to her sojourn at Cowan Bridge from Charlotte 
Bronte herself. I never heard her speak of the place but once, 
and that was on the second day of my acquaintance with her. 
A little child on that occasion expressed some reluctance to 
finish eating his piece of bread at dinner ; and she, stooping 
down, and addressing him in a low voice, told him how thank- 
ful she should have been at his age for a piece of bread ; and 
when we — though I am not sure if I myself spoke — asked 
her some question as to the occasion she alluded to, she re- 
plied with reserve and hesitation, evidently shying away from 
what she imagined might lead to too much conversation on 
one of her books. She spoke of the oat-cake at Cowan Bridge 
(the clap-bread of Westmoreland) as being different to the 
leaven-raised oat-cake of Yorkshire^ and of her childish distaste 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I5 

for it. Some one present made an allusion to a similar childish 
dislike in the true tale of ^' The Terrible Knitters o' Dent" given 
in Southey's "Commonplace Book "; and she smiled faintly, 
but said that the mere difference in food was not all ; that the 
food itself was spoilt by the dirty carelessness of the cook, so 
that she and her sister disliked their meals exceedingly ; and 
she named her relief and gladness when the doctor condemned 
the meat, and spoke of having seen him spit it out. These 
are all the details I ever heard from her. She so avoided 
particularizing, that I think Mn Cams Wilson's name never 
passed between us. 

One may fancy how repulsive such fare would be to 
children whose appetites were small, and who had been 
accustomed to food, far simpler perhaps, but prepared with 
a delicate cleanliness that made it both tempting and whole- 
some. At many a meal the little Brontes went without food, 
although craving with hunger. They were not strong when 
they came, having only just recovered from a complication 
of measles and whooping-cough : indeed, I suspect they had 
scarcely recovered ; for there was some consultation on the 
part of the school authorities whether Maria and Elizabeth 
should be received or not, in July, 1824. Mr. Bronte came 
again, in the September of that year, bringing with him 
Charlotte and Emily to be admitted as pupils. 

There was another trial of health common to all the girls. 
The path from Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, where Mr. 
Wilson preached, and where they all attended on the Sunday, 
is more than two miles in length, and goes sweeping along the 
rise and fall of the unsheltered country in a way to make it a 
fresh and exhilarating walk in summer, but a bitter cold one 
in winter, especially to children like the delicate little Brontes, 
w^hose thin blood flowed languidly in consequence of their fee- 
ble appetites rejecting the food prepared for them, and thus 
inducing a half starved condition. The church was not warmed, 
there being no means for this purpose. It stands in the midst 
of fields, and the damp mist must have gathered round the 
walls, and crept in at the windows. The girls took their cold 
dinner with them, and ate it between the services, in a chamber 
over the entrance, opening out of the former galleries. The 
arrangements for this day were peculiarly trying to delicate 
children, particularly to those who were spiritless and longing 
for home, as poor Maria Bronte must have been ; for her ill 
health was increasing, and the old cough, the remains of the 
whooping-cough, lingered about her. 

She was far superior in mind to any of her playfellows and 



l6 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

companions, and was lonely among them from that very 
cause ; and yet she had faults, so annoying that she was in 
constant disgrace with her teachers, and an object of merciless 
dislike to one of them, who is depicted as Miss Scatcherd in 
** Jane Eyre," and whose real name I will be merciful enough 
not to disclose. I need hardly say that Helen Burns is as 
exact a transcript of Maria Bronte as Charlotte's wonderful 
power of reproducing character could give. Her heart, to the 
latest day on which we met, still beat with unavailing indigna- 
tion at the worrying and the cruelty to which her gentle, 
patient, dying sister had been subjected by this woman. Not 
a word of that part of '' Jane Eyre " but is a literal repetition 
of scenes between the pupil and the teacher. Those who had 
been pupils at the same time knew who must have written the 
book from the force with which Helen Burns's Sufferings are 
described. They had, before that, recognized the description 
of the sweet dignity and benevolence of Miss Temple as only 
a just tribute to the merits of one whom all that knew her 
appear to hold in honor ; but when Miss Scatcherd was held 
up to opprobrium they also recognized in the writer of ''Jane 
Eyre" an unconsciously avenging sister of the sufferer. 

One of their fellow pupils, among other statements even 
worse, gives me the following : The dormitory in which Maria 
slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on 
each side, occupied by the pupils ; and at the end of this 
dormitory there was a small bedchamber opening out of it, 
appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd. Maria's bed stood 
nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had 
become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to 
her side (the sore from which was not perfectly healed), when 
the getting-up bell was heard, poor Maria moaned out that she 
was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed ; and 
some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would ex- 
plain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss 
Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be 
faced before Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could inter- 
fere ; so the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold, as, 
without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted 
stockings over her thin white legs (my informant spoke as if 
she saw it yet, and her whole face flashed out undying indig- 
nation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room, and, 
without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and 
frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which 
the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement 
whirled her out into the middle of the floor, abusing her all 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 17 

the time for dirty and untidy liabits. There she left her. My 
informant says Maria hardly spoke, except to beg some of the 
more indignant girls to be calm ; but, in slow, trembling 
movements, with many a pause, she went downstairs at last — 
and was punished for being late. 

Any one may fancy how such an event as this would rankle 
in Charlotte's mind. I only wonder that she did not remon- 
strate against her father's decision to send her and Emily back 
to Cowan Bridge, after Maria's and Elizabeth's deaths. But 
frequently children are unconscious of the effect which some 
of their simple revelations would have in altering the opinions 
entertained by their friends of the persons placed around them. 
Besides, Charlotte's earnest, vigorous mind saw, at an unusu- 
ally early age, the immense importance of education, as fur- 
nishing her with tools which she had the strength and the will 
to wield, and she would be aware that the Cowan Bridge edu- 
cation was, in many points, the best that her father could pro- 
vide for her. 

In the spring of 1825 Maria became so rapidly worse 
that Mr. Bronte was sent for. He had not previously 
been aware of her illness, and the condition in which he 
feund her was a terrible shock to him. He took her home 
by the Leeds coach, the girls crowding out into the road to 
follow her with their eyes over the bridge, past the cottages, 
and then out of sight forever. She died a very few days 
after her arrival at home. Perhaps the news of her death, 
falling suddenly into the life of which her patient existence 
had formed a part, only a little week or so before, made 
those who remained at Cowan Bridge look with more anxiety 
on Elizabeth's symptoms, which also turned out to be consump- 
tive. She was sent home in charge of a confidential servant 
of the establishment ; and she, too, died in the early summer 
of that year. Charlotte was thus suddenly called into the re- 
sponsibilities of eldest sister in a motherless family. She re- 
membered how anxiously her dear sister Maria had striven, in 
her grave, earnest way, to be a tender helper and a counselor 
to them all ; and the duties that now fell upon her seemed 
almost like a legacy from the gentle little sufferer so lately 
dead. 

Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the mid- 
summer holidays in this fatal year. But before the next winter 
it was thought desirable to advise their removal, as it was evi- 
dent that the damp situation of the house at Cowan Bridge did 
not suit their health. 

For the reason just stated the little girls were sent home in 



15 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

the autumn of 1825, when Charlotte was little more than nine 
years old. 

About this time, an elderly woman (Tabby) of the village 
came to live as servant at the parsonage. She remained 
there, as a member of the household, for thirty years. 
Charlotte was only eighteen months older than Emily; but Emily 
and Anne were simply companions and playmates, while Char- 
lotte was motherly friend and guardian to both ; and this loving 
assumption of duties beyond her years made her feel consider- 
ably older than she really was. 

Patrick Branwell, their only brother, was a boy of remarkable 
promise, and, in some ways, of extraordinary precocity of talent. 
Mr. Bronte's friends advised him to send his son to school ; 
but, remembering both the strength of will of his own youth 
and his mode of employing it, he believed that Patrick was bet- 
ter at home, and that he himself could teach him well, as he 
had taught others before. So Patrick — or as his family called 
him, Branwell — remained at Haworth, working hard for some 
hours a day with his father ; but when the time of the latter 
was taken up with his parochial duties the boy was thrown 
into chance companionship with the lads of the village — for 
youth will to youth, and boys will to boys. ♦ 

Still, he was associated in many of his sisters' plays and 
amusements. These were mostly of a sedentary and intellect- 
ual nature. I have had a curious packet confided to me, con- 
taining an immense amount of manuscript (twenty-two 
volumes) in an inconceivably small space ; tales, dramas, 
poems, romances, written principally by Charlotte, in a hand 
which it is almost impossible to decipher without the aid of a 
magnifying glass. 

As each volume contains from sixty to a hundred pages, the 
amount of the whole seems very great, if we remember that it 
was all written in about fifteen months. So much for the quan- 
tity ; the quality strikes me as of singular merit for a girl of 
thirteen or fourteen, both as a specimen of her prose style 
at this time, and also as revealing something of the quiet do- 
mestic life led by these children. 



CHAPTER III. 

This is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal descrip- 
tion of Miss Bronte. In 1831 she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, 
of nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure — " stunted" 
was the word she applied to herself ; but as her limbs and 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I9 

head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no 
word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could 
properly be applied to her ; with soft, thick, brown hair, and 
peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, 
as they appeared to me in her later life. They were large and 
well shaped ; their color a reddish brown ; but if the iris was 
Closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety 
of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelli- 
gence ; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid in- 
terest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if 
some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed behind 
those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any other 
human creature. As for the rest of her features, they were 
plain, large, and ill set ; but, unless you began to catalogue 
them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power 
of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect ; the 
crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the 
whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all 
those whom she herself would have cared to attract. Her 
hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw ; when one of the 
former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird 
in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers had a 
peculiar fineness of sensation, w^hich was one reason why all 
her handiwork, of whatever kind — writing, sewing, knit- 
ting — was so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkabl}'' 
neat in her whole personal attire ; but she was dainty as to 
the fit of her shoes and gloves. 

I can well imagine that the grave, serious composure, which, 
when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian 
portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that 
early age when she found herself in the position of an elder 
sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered 
on her teens, such an expression would be called (to use a 
country phrase) ^^old-fashioned"; and in 1831, the period of 
which I now write, we must think of her as a little, set, anti- 
quated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress ; 
for besides the influence exerted by her father's ideas concern- 
ing the simplicity of attire befitting the wife and daughters of 
a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing 
her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since 
she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Pen- 
zance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart. 

In January, 183 1, Charlotte was sent to school again. This 

time she went as a pupil to the Miss W , who lived at Roe 

Head, a cheerful, roomy country house, standing a little apart 



20 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

in a field, on the right of the road from Leeds to Hudders- 
field. Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows 
run from basement to roof, and look down upon a long green 
slope of pasture land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirk- 
lees, Sir George Armitage's park. Although Roe Head and 
Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country- 
is as totally dissimilar as if they enjoyed a different climate. 
The soft curving and heaving landscape round the former 
gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the heights, 
and of sunny warmth in the broad green valleys below. It is 
just such a neighborhood as the monks loved, and traces of 
the old Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere, side 
by side with the manufacturing interests of the West Riding 
of to-day. 

The kind, motherly nature of Miss W , and the small 

number of the girls, made the establishment more like a private 
family than a school. Moreover, she was a native of the dis- 
trict immediately surrounding Roe Head, as were the majority 
of her pupils. Most likely Charlotte Bronte, in coming from 
Haworth, came the greatest distance of all. '* E.'s " home was 
five miles away ; two other dear friends (the Rose and Jessie 
Yorke of ^^ Shirley ") lived still nearer ; two or three came from 
Huddersfield ; one or two from Leeds. 

I shall now quote from a valuable letter which I have re- 
ceived from *' Mary," one of these early friends ; distinct and 
graphic in expression, as becomes a cherished associate of 
Charlotte Bronte's. The time referred to is her first appear- 
ance at Roe Head, on January 19, 1831. 

'* I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old- 
fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She 

was coming to school at Miss W 's. When she appeared in 

the schoolroom her dress was changed, but just as old. She 
looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always 
appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from 
side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and 
nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book 
was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly 
touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went 
the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not 
possible to help laughing." 

This was the first impression she made upon one of those 
whose dear and valued friend she was to become in after life. 
Another of the girls recalls her first sight of Charlotte, on the 
day she came, standing by the schoolroom window, looking 
out on the snowy landscape, and crying, while all the rest were 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 21 

at play. "E." was younger than she, and her tender heart 
was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which she 
found the oddly dressed, odd-looking little girl that winter 
morning, as " sick for home she stood in tears," in a new, 
strange place, among new, strange people. Any over-demon- 
strative kindness would have scared the wild little maiden 
from Haworth ; but ^^ E." (who is shadowed forth in the Caro- 
line Helstone of " Shirley ") managed to win confidence, and 
was allowed to give sympathy. 

To quote again from '' Mary's " letter : 

^' We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt 
gram.mar at all, and very little geography." 

This account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her 
other schoolfellows. But Miss W was a lady of remark- 
able intelligence and of delicate, tender sympathy. She gave a 
proof of this in her first treatment of Charlotte. The little 

girl was well-read, but not well-grounded. Miss W took 

her aside and told her she was afraid that she must place her 
in the second class for some time, till she could overtake the 
girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar, etc. ; but 
poor Charlotte received this announcement with so sad a fit of 

crying, that Miss W 's kind heart was softened, and she 

wisely perceived that, with such a girl, it would be better to 
place her in the first class, and allow her to make up by private 
study in those branches where she was deficient. 

Her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted Miss 

W on into setting her longer and longer tasks of reading 

for examination ; and toward the end of the year and a half 
that she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she received her 
first bad mark for an imperfect lesson. She had had a great 
quantity of Blair's '^ Lectures on Belles Lettres"to read ; and 
she could not answer some of the questions upon it ; Charlotte 

Bronte had a bad mark. MissW was sorry, and regretted 

that she had set Charlotte so long a task. Charlotte cried bit- 
terly. But her schoolfellows were more than sorry — they were 
indignant. They declared that the infliction of ever so slight 
a punishment on Charlotte Bronte was unjust — for who had 
tried to do her duty like her? — and testified their feeling in a 

variety of ways, until Miss W , who was in reality only too 

willing to pass over her good pupil's first fault, withdrew the 
bad mark ; and the girls all returned to their allegiance except 
'' Mary." 

Miss Bronte left Roe Head in 1832, having won the affec- 
tionate regard both of her teacher and her schoolfellows, and 
having formed there the two fast friendships which lasted her 



22 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

whole life long : the one with *' Mary," who has not kept her 
letters; the other with '^ E.," who has kindly intrusted me with 
a large portion of Miss Bronte's correspondence with her. 
This she has been induced to do by her knowledge of the ur- 
gent desire on the part of Mr. Bronte that the life of his 
daughter should be written, and in compliance with a request 
from her husband that I should be permitted to have the use 
of these letters, without which such a task could be but very 
imperfectly executed. 

After her return home she employed herself in teaching her 
sisters, over whom she had had superior advantages. She 
writes thus, July 21, 1832, of her course of life at the par- 
sonage : 

*^An account of one day is an account of all. In the morn- 
ing, from nine o'clock till half-past twelve, I instruct my sisters 
and draw ; then we walk till dinner time. After dinner I sew 
till tea time, and after tea I either write, read, or do a little 
fancy work, or draw, as I please. Thus, in one delightful, 
though somewhat monotonous course, my life is passed. I 
have been only out twice to tea since I came home. We are 
expecting company this afternoon, and on Tuesday next we 
shall have all the female teachers of the Sunday-school to tea." 

It was about this time that Mr. Bronte provided his children 
with a teacher in drawing, who turned out to be a man of con- 
siderable talent, but very little principle. Although they never 
attained to anything like proficiency, they took great interest 
in acquiring this art ; evidently, from an instinctive desire to 
express their powerful imaginations in visible forms. Charlotte 
told me, that at this period of her life, drawing and walking 
out with her sisters formed the two great pleasures and relax- 
ations of her day. 

The three girls used to walk upward toward the^^purple- 
.black " moors, the sweeping surface of which was broken by 
here and there a stone quarry ; and if they had strength and 
time to go far enough, they reached a waterfall, where the 
beck fell over some rocks into the '^ bottom." 

Mr. Bronte encouraged a taste for reading in his girls ; and 
though Miss Branwell kept it in due bounds by the variety of 
household occupations, in which she expected them not merely 
to take a part, but to become proficients, thereby occupying 
regularly a good portion of every day, they were allowed to 
get books from the circulating library at Keighley ; and many 
a happy walk, up those long four miles, must they have had, 
burdened with some new book, into which they peeped as they 
hurried home. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I3 

The first impression made on the visitor by the sisters of 
her school friend was, that Emily was a tall, long-armed girl, 
more fully grown than her elder sister ; extremely reserved in 
manner. I distinguish reserve from shyness, because I imagine 
shyness would please, if it knew how ; whereas, reserve is in- 
different whether it pleases or not. Anne, like her eldest 
sister, was shy ; Emily was reserved. 

Branwell v/as rather a handsome boy, with ^' tawny" hair, 
to use Miss Bronte's phrase for a more obnoxious color. All 
were very clever, original, and utterly different to any people 
or family "E." had ever seen before. But, on the whole, it 
was a happy visit to all parties. Charlotte says, in writing to 
"E." just after her return home, "Were I to tell you of the 
impression you have made on everyone here, you would accuse 
me of flattery. Papa and aunt are continually adducing you 
as an example for me to shape my actions and behavior by. 
Emily and Anne say * they never saw any one they liked so 
well as you.' And Tabby, whom you have absolutely fasci- 
nated, talks a great deal more nonsense about your ladyship 
than I care to repeat. It is now so dark that, notwithstanding 
the singular property of seeing in the night time, which the 
young ladies of Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can 
scribble no longer." 

Haworth is built with an utter disregard of all sanitary con- 
ditions ; the great old churchyard lies above all the houses, 
and it is terrible to think how the very water-springs of the 
pumps below must be poisoned. But this winter of 1833-34 
was particularly wet and rainy, and there were an unusual num- 
ber of deaths in the village. A dreary season it was to the 
family in the parsonage ; their usual walks obstructed by the 
spongy state of the moors — the passing and funeral bells so 
frequently tolling, and filling the heavy air with their mournful 
sound — and, when they were still, the " chip, chip " of the 
mason, as he cut the gravestones in a shed close by. In 
many, living, as it were, in a churchyard, and with all the 
sight and sounds connected with the last offices to the dead 
things of everyday occurrence, the very familiarity would 
have bred indifference. But it was otherwise with Charlotte 
Bronte. One of her friends says, " I have seen her turn pale 
and feel faint when, in Hartshead church, some one accident- 
ally remarked that we were walking over graves. Charlotte 
was Certainly afraid of death. Not only of dead bodies, or 
dying people. She dreaded it as something horrible. She 
told me long ago that a misfortune was often preceded by 
the dream, frequently repeated, which she gives to "Jane 



24 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE 15R0NTE. 

Eyre," of carrying a little wailing child, and being unable to 
still it. 

About the beginning of 1834, ^^ E." went to London for the 
first time. The idea of her friend's visit seems to have stirred 
Charlotte strangely, for she evidently imagines that an entire 
change of character for the worse is the usual effect of a 
visit to ^' the great metropolis," and is delighted to find 
that '' E." is '* E." still. And, as her faith in her friend's sta- 
bility is restored, her own imagination is deeply moved by the 
idea of what great wonders are to be seen in that vast and 
famous city. 

CHAPTER IV. 

In the middle of the summer of 1835, a great family plan 
was mooted at the parsonage. The question was, to what 
trade or profession should Branwell be brought up ? He was 
now nearly eighteen ; it was time to decide. He was very 
clever, no doubt ; perhaps, to begin with, the greatest genius 
in this rare family. The sisters hardly recongnized their own, 
or each others' powers, but they knew his. The father, igno- 
rant of many failings in moral conduct, did proud homage to 
the great gifts of his son ; for Branwell's talents were readily 
and willingly brought out for the entertainment of others. 
Popular admiration was sweet to him. And this led to his 
presence being sought at *'arvills" and all the great village 
gatherings, for the Yorkshire men have a keen relish for in- 
tellect ; and it likewise procured him the undesirable distinc- 
tion of having his company recommended by the landlord of 
the Black Bull to any chance traveler who might happen to 
feel solitary or dull over his liquor. "- Do you want some one 
to help you with your bottle, sir ? If you do, I'll send up for 
Patrick " (so the villagers called him till the day of his death, 
though in his own family he was always " Branwell"). And 
while the messenger went, the landlord entertained his guest 
with accounts of the wonderful talents of the boy, whose preco- 
cious cleverness and great conversational powers were the 
pride of the village. The attacks of ill health to which Mr. 
Bronte had been subject of late years, rendered it not only 
necessary that he should take his dinner alone (for the sake of 
avoiding temptations to unwholesome diet), but made it also 
desirable that he should pass the time directly succeeding his 
meals in perfect quiet. And this necessity, combined with due 
attention to his parochial duties, made him partially ignorant 
how his son employed himself out of lesson time. His own 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 25 

youth had been spent among people of the same conventional 
rank as those into whose companionship Branwell was now 
thrown ; but he had had a strong will, and an earnest and per- 
severing ambition, and a resoluteness of purpose which his 
weaker son wanted. 

It is singular how strong a yearning the whole family had 
toward the art of drawing. Mr. Bronte had been very solicit- 
ous to get them good instruction ; the girls themselves loved 
everything connected with it — all descriptions or engravings of 
great pictures ; and, in default of good ones, they would take 
and analyze any print or drawing which came in their way, and 
find out how much thought had gone to its composition, what 
ideas it was intended to suggest, and what it did suggest. In 
the same spirit, they labored to design imaginations of their 
own ; they lacked the power of execution, not of conception. 
At one time Charlotte had the notion of making her living as 
an artist, and wearied her eyes in drawing with pre-Raphaelite 
minuteness, but not with pre-Raphaelite accuracy, for she drew 
from fancy rather than from nature. 

But they all thought there could be no doubt about Bran- 
well's talent for drawing. I have seen an oil painting of his, 
done I know not when, but probably about this time. It was a 
group of his sisters, life-size, three-quarters length ; not much 
better than sign-painting, as to manipulation ; but the like- 
nesses w^ere, I should think, admirable. I could only judge of 
the fidelity with which the other two were depicted, from the 
striking resemblance which Charlotte, upholding the great 
frame of canvas, and consequently standing right behind it, 
bore to her own representation, though it must have been ten 
years and more since the portraits were taken. The picture 
was divided, almost in the middle, by a great pillar. On the 
side of the column which was lighted by the sun stood Char- 
lotte, in the womanly dress of that day of gigot sleeves and 
large collars. On the deeply shadowed side was Emily, with 
Anne's gentle face resting on her shoulder. Emily's counte- 
nance struck me as full of power ; Charlotte's of solicitude ; 
Anne's of tenderness. The two younger seemed hardly to have 
attained their full growth, though Emily was taller than Char- 
lotte ; they had cropped hair, and a more girlish dress. I re- 
member looking on those two sad, earnest, shadowed faces, and 
wondering whether I could trace the mysterious expression 
which is said to foretell an early death. I had some fond, su- 
perstitious hope that the column divided their fates from hers, 
who stood apart in the canvas, as in life she survived. I liked 
to see that the bright side of the pillar was toward her ; that 



26 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

the light in the picture fell on he?- : I might more truly have 
sought in her presentment — nay, in her living face — for the 
sign of death in her prime. They were good likenesses, how- 
ever badly executed. From thence I should guess his family 
augured truly that, if Branw^ell had but the opportunity, and, 
alas! had but the moral qualities, he might turn out a great 
painter. 

The best way of preparing him to become so, appeared to be 
to send him as a pupil to the Royal Academy. I dare say he 
longed and yearned to follow this path, principally because it 
would lead him to that mysterious London — that Babylon the 
great — which seems to have filled the imaginations and haunted 
the minds of all the younger members of this recluse family. 
To Branwell it was more than a vivid imagination, it was an 
impressed reality. By dint of studying maps he was as well 
acquainted with it, even down to its byways, as if he had lived 
there. Poor misguided fellow ! this craving to see and know 
London, and that stronger craving after fame, were never to 
be satisfied. He w^as to die at the end of a short and blighted 
life. But in this year of 1835, ^^^ his home kindred were 
thinking how they could best forward his views, and how help 
him u-p to the pinnacle where he desired to be. What their 
plans were, let Charlotte explain. These are not the first sisters 
who have laid their lives as a sacrifice before their brother's 
idolized wish. Would to God they might be the last who met 
with such a miserable return ! 

*' Haworth, July 6, 1835. 
" I had hoped to have had the extreme pleasure of seeing 
you at Haworth this summer, but human affairs are mutable, 
and human resolutions must bend to the course of events. 
We are all about to divide, break up, separate. Emily is going 
to school, Branwell is going to London, and I am going to be 
a governess. This last determination I formed myself, know- 
ing that I should have to take the step some time, ^and better 
sune as syne,' to use the Scotch proverb ; and knowing well 
that papa would have enough to do with his limited income, 
should Branwell be placed at the Royal Academy, and Emily at 
Roe Head. Where am I going to reside ? you will ask. AVithin 
four miles of you, at a place neither of us is unacquainted 
with, being no other than the identical Roe Head mentioned 
above. Yes ! I am going to teach in the very school where I 

was myself taught. Miss \V made me the offer, and I 

preferred it to one or two proposals of private governess-ship, 
which I had before received. I am sad — very sad — at the 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 27 

thought of leaving home ; but duty — necessity — these are stern 
mistresses, who will not be disobeyed. Did I not once say you 
ought to be thankful for your independence ? I felt what I 
said at the time, and I repeat it now with double earnestness ; 
if anything would cheer me it is the idea of being so near you. 
Surely, you and Polly will come and see me ; it would be 
wrong in me to doubt it ; you were never unkind yet. Emily 
and 1 leave home on the 27th of this month ; the idea of being 
together consoles us both somewhat, and, truth, since I must 
enter a situation, ^ My lines have fallen in pleasant places.' I 
both love and respect Miss W ." 

On the 29th of July, 1835, Charlotte, now little more than 

nineteen years old, went as teacher to Miss W 's. Emily 

accompanied her as a pupil ; but she became literally ill from 
homesickness, and could not settle to anything ; and after 
passing only three months at Roe Head, returned to the par- 
sonage and the beloved moors. 

This physical suffering on Emily's part when absent from 
Haworth, after recurring several times under similar circum- 
stances, became at length so much an acknowledged fact that, 
whichever was obliged to leave home, the sisters decided that 
Emily must remain there, where alone she could enjoy any- 
thing like good health. She left it twice again in her life ; 
once going as teacher to a school in Halifax for six months, 
and afterward accompanying Charlotte to Brussels for ten. 
When at home, she took the principal part of the cooking 
upon herself, and did all the household ironing ; and after 
Tabby grew old and infirm, it was Emily who made all the 
bread for the family ; and any one passing by the kitchen 
door might have seen her studying German out of an open 
book, propped up before her, as she kneaded the dough ; but 
no study, however interesting, interfered with the goodness of 
the bread, which was always light and excellent. Books were, 
indeed, a very common sight in that kitchen ; the girls were 
taught by their father theoretically, and by their aunt practi- 
cally, that to take an active part in all household work was, in 
their position, w^oman's simple duty ; but, in their careful em- 
ployment of time, they found many an odd five minutes for 
reading while watching the cakes, and managed the union of 
two kinds of employment better than King Alfred. 

Charlotte's life at Miss W 's was a very happy one, until 

her health failed. She sincerely loved and respected the for- 
mer schoolmistress, to whom she was now become both com- 
panion and friend. The girls were hardly strangers to her, 



28 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

some of them being younger sisters of those who had been 
her own playmates. Though the duties of the day might be 
tedious and monotonous, there were always two or three happy 
hours to look forward to in the evening, when she and Miss 

W sat together — sometimes late into the night — and had 

quiet, pleasant conversations, or pauses of silence as agreeable, 
because each felt that as soon as a thought or remark occurred 
which they wished to express, there was an intelligent compan- 
ion ready to sympathize, and yet they were not compelled to 
" make talk." 

About this time Miss W removed her school from the 

fine, open, breezy situation of Roe Head, to Dewsbury Moor, 
only two or three miles distant. Her new residence was on a 
lower site, and the air was less exhilarating to one bred in the 
wild hill village of Haworth. Emily had gone as teacher to a 
school at Halifax, where there were nearly forty pupils. 

'' I have had one letter from her since her departure," writes 
Charlotte, on October 2, 1836 ; " it gives an appalling account 
of her duties ; hard labor from six in the morning to eleven at 
night, with only one-half hour of exercise between. This is 
slavery. I fear she can never stand it." 

When the sisters met at home in the Christmas holidays, 
they talked over their lives, and the prospect which they af- 
forded of employment and remuneration. They felt that it 
was a duty to relieve their father of the burden of their sup- 
port, if not entirely, or that of all three, at least that of one or 
two, and, naturally, the lot devolved upon the elder ones to 
find some occupation which would enable them to do this. 
They knew that they were never likely to inherit much money. 
Mr. Bronte had but a small stipend, and was both charitable 
and liberal. Their aunt had an annuity of ;^5o, but it reverted 
to others at her death, and her nieces had no right, and were 
the last persons in the \vorld to reckon upon her savings. 
What could they do ? Charlotte and Emily were trying teach- 
ing, and, as it seemed, without much success. The former, it 
is true, had the happiness of having a friend for her employer, 
and of being surrounded by those who knew her and loved 
her ; but her salary was too small for her to save out of it ; 
and her education did not entitle her to a larger. The seden- 
tary and monotonous nature of her life, too, was preying upon 
her health and spirits, although, with necessity " as her mis- 
tress," she might hardly like to acknowledge this even to her- 
self. But Emily, — that free, wild, untameable spirit, never 
happy nor well but on the sweeping moors that gathered around 
her home, — that hater of strangers, doomed to live amongst 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 29 

them, and not merely to live but to slave in their service — what 
Charlotte could have borne patiently for herself, she could not 
bear for her sister. And yet what to do ? She had once hoped 
that she herself might become an artist, and so earn her liveli- 
hood ; but her eyes had failed her in the minute and useless 
labor which she had imposed upon herself with a view to this 
end. 

It was the household custom among these girls to sew till 
nine o'clock at night. At that hour Miss Branwell generally 
went to bed, and her nieces' duties for the day were accounted 
done. They put away their work, and began to pace the room 
backward and forward, up and down, — as often with the candles 
extinguished, for economy's sake, as not, — their figures glanc- 
ing into the firelight, and out into the shadow, perpetually. 
At this time, they talked over past cares and troubles ; they 
planned for the future, and consulted each other as to their 
plans. In after years this was the time for discussing together 
the plots of their novels. And again, still later, this was the 
time for the last surviving sister to walk alone, from old ac- 
customed habit, round and round the desolate room, thinking 
sadly upon the ^' days that were no more." But this Christ- 
mas of 1836 was not without its hopes and daring aspirations. 
They had tried their hands at story-writing, in their miniature 
magazine, long ago ; they all of them '' made out " perpetually. 
They had likewise attempted to write poetry ; and had a mod- 
est confidence that they had achieved a tolerable success. But 
they knew that they might deceive themselves, and that sisters' 
judgments of each other's productions were likely to be too par- 
tial to be depended upon. So Charlotte, as the eldest, resolved 
to write to Southey. I believe (from an expression in a letter 
to be noticed hereafter) that she also consulted Coleridge ; 
but I have not met with any part of that correspondence. 

On December 29 her letter to Southey was dispatched ; 
and from an-excitement not unnatural in a girl who has worked 
herself up to the pitch of writing to a poet laureate and ask- 
ing his opinion of her poems, she used some high-flown expres- 
sions, which probably gave him the idea that she was a romantic 
young lady, unacquainted with the realities of life. 

This, most likely, was the first of those adventurous letters 
that passed through the little, post-office of Haworth. Morn- 
ing after morning of the holidays slipped away, and there was 
no answer ; the sisters had to leave home, and Emily to return 
to her distasteful duties, without knowing even whether 
Charlotte's letter had ever reached its destination. 

Not dispirited, however, by the delay, Branwell determined 



30 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

to try a similar venture, and addressed the following letter to 
Wordsworth. It was given by the poet to Mr. Quillinan in 
1850, after the name of Bronte had become known and famous. 
I have no means of ascertaining what answer was returned by 
Mr. Wordsworth ; but that he considered the letter remarkable 
may, I think, be inferred both from its preservation and its 
recurrence to his memory when the real name of Currer Bell 
was made known to the public. 

" Haworth, near Bradford, 

** Yorkshire, January 19, 1837. 

"Sir: I most earnestly entreat you to read and pass your 
judgment upon what I have sent you, because from the day 
of my birth to this the nineteenth year of my life, I have lived 
among secluded hills, where I could neither know v/hat I was, 
or what I could do. I read for the same reason that I ate or 
drank; because it was a real craving of nature. I wrote on 
the same principle as I spoke — out of the impulse and feelings 
of the mind; nor could I help it, for what came, came out, 
and there was the end of it. For as to self-conceit, that could 
not receive food from flattery, since to this hour not half a 
dozen people in the world know that I have ever penned a line. 

"But a change has taken place now, sir, and I am arrived 
at an age wherein I must do something for myself; the powers 
I possess must be exercised to a definite end, and as I don't 
know them myself, I must ask of others what they are worth. 
Yet there is not one here to tell me; and still, if they are 
worthless, time will henceforth be too precious to be wasted on 
them. 

"Do pardon me, sir, that I have ventured to come before one 
whose works I have most loved in our literature, and who most 
has been with me a divinity of the mind — laying before him 
one of my writings, and asking of him a judgment of its contents. 
I must come before some one from whose sentence there is 
no appeal; and such a one is he who has developed the theory 
of poetry as well as its practice, and both in such a way as to 
claim a place in the memory of a thousand years to come. 

"My aim, sir, is to push out into the open world, and for 
this I trust not poetry alone; that might launch the vessel, but 
could not bear her on ; sensible and scientific prose, bolt and 
vigorous efforts in my walk in life, would give a farther tide to 
the notice of the world ; and then again poetry ought to brighten 
and crown that name with glory; but nothing of all this can be 
ever begun without means, and as I don't possess these, I must 
in every shape strive to gain thenu Surely, in this day, when 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE DRONTE. 3I 

there is not a writing poet worth a sixpence, the field must be 
open, if a better man can step forward. 

* 'What I send you is the Prefatory Scene of a much longer 
subject in which I have striven to develop strong passions and 
weak principles struggling with a high imagination and acute 
feelings, till, as youth hardens toward age, evil deeds and short 
enjoyments end in mental misery and bodily ruin. Now, to 
send you the whole of this would be a mock upon your patience ; 
what you see does not even pretend to be more than the de- 
scription of an imaginative child. But read it, sir ; and, as you 
would hold a light to one in utter darkness — as you vakie your 
own kindheartedness — 7'ehcrn me an a?iswer^ if but one word, 
telling me whether I should write on, or write no more. For- 
give undue warmth, because my feelings in this matter cannot 
be cool ; and believe me, sir, with deep respect, 
*'Your really humble servant, 

"P. B. Bronte/* 

January and February of 1837 had passed away, and still 
there was no reply from Southey. Probably she had lost ex- 
pectation and almost hope when at length, in the beginning of 
March, she received the letter, inserted in Mr. C. C. Southey's 
life of his father, vol. iv, p. 327. 

After accounting for his delay in replying to hers by the fact 
of a long absence from home, during which his letters had ac- 
cumulated, whence ** it has lain unanswered till the last of a nu- 
merous file, not from disrespect or indifference to its contents, 
but because, in truth, it is not an easy task to answer it, nor a 
pleasant one to cast a damp over the high spirits and the generous 
desires of youth," he goes on to say: "What you are I can 
only infer from your letter, which appears to be written in sin- 
cerity, though I may suspect that you have used a fictitious 
signature. Be that as it may, the letter and the verses bear the 
same stamp, and I can well understand the state of mind they 
indicate. 

**It is not my advice that you have asked as to the direction 
of your talents, but my opinion of them; and yet the opinion 
may be worth little, and the advice much. You evidently 
possess, and in no inconsiderable degree, what Wordsworth 
calls the 'faculty of verse.' I am not depreciating it when I say 
that in these times it is not rare. Many volumes of poems are 
now published every year without attracting public attention, 
any one of which if it had appeared half a century ago would 
have obtained a high reputation for its author. Whoever, ther^- 



32 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

fore, is ambitious of distinction in this way ought to be prepared 
for disappointment. 

"But it is not with a view to distinction that you shoul-d cul- 
tivate this talent, if you consult your own happiness. I, who 
have made literature my profession, and devoted my life to it, 
and have never for a moment repented of the deliberate choice, 
think myself, nevertheless, bound in duty to caution every 
young man who applies as an aspirant to me for encouragement 
and advice, against taking so perilous a course. You will say 
that a woman has no need of such a caution ; there can be no 
peril in it for her. In a certain sense this is true; but there is 
a danger of which I would, with all kindness and all earnestness, 
warn you. The day dreams in which you habitually indulge 
are likely to induce a distempered state of mind ; and in pro- 
portion as all the ordinary duties of the world seem to you flat and 
unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them without becoming 
fitted for anything else. Literature cannot be the business of a 
woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged 
in her proper duties, the less leisure w^ill she have for it, even 
as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you 
have not yet been called, and when you are you w^ill be less eager 
for celebrity. You will not seek in imagination for excitement, 
of which the vicissitudes of this life, and the anxieties from 
which you must not hope to be exempted, be your state what 
it may, will bring with them but too much. 

"But do not suppose that I disparage the gift which you 
possess ; nor that I would discourage you from exercising it. I 
only exhort you so to think of it, and so to use it, as to render it 
conductive to your own permanent good. Write poetry for its 
own sake ; not in a spirit of emulation, and not w^ith a view to 
celebrity ; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be 
to deserve and finally to obtain it. So written, it is wholesome 
both for the heart and soul; it may be made the surest means, 
next to religion, of soothing the mind and elevating it. You 
may embody in it your best thoughts and your wisest feelings, 
and in so doing discipline and strengthen them. 

"Farewell, madam. It is not because I have forgotten that 
I was once young myself that I write to you in this strain; but 
because I remember it. You will neither doubt my sincerity 
nor my good- will ; and however ill what has here been said may 
accord with your present views and temper, the longer you live 
the more reasonable it will appear to you. Though I may be 
but an ungracious adviser, you will allow me, therefore, to sub- 
scribe myself, with the best wishes for your happiness here and 
hereafter, your true friend, * 'Robert Southey," 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. ^^ 

I was with Miss Bronte when she received Mr. Cuthbert 
Southey's note, requesting her permission to insert the foregoing 
letter in his father's life. She said to me, * *Mr. Southey's 
letter was kind and admirable; a little stringent, but it did me 
good." It is partly because I think it is so admirable, and 
partly because it tends to bring out her character, as shown in 
the following reply, that I have taken the liberty of inserting 
the foregoing extracts from it. 

''March i6. 

"Sir: I cannot rest till I have answered your letter, even 
though by addressing you a second time I should appear a little 
intrusive; but I must thank you for the kind and wise advice 
you have condescended to give me. I had not ventured to 
hope for such a reply ; so considerate in its tone, so noble in 
its spirit. I must suppress what I feel, or you will think me 
foolishly enthusiastic. 

'*At the first perusal of your letter, I felt only shame and 
regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you with my crude 
rhapsody ; I felt a painful heat rise to my face when I thought 
of the quires. of paper I had covered with what once gave me so 
much delight, but which now was only a source of confusion ; 
but after I had thought a little and read it again and again, 
the prospect seemed to clear. You do not forbid me to write; 
you do not say that what I write is utterly destitute of merit. 
You only warn me against the folly of neglecting real duties 
for the sake of imaginative pleasures ; of writing for the love of 
fame; for the selfish excitement of emulation. You kindly 
allow me to write poetry for its own sake, provided I leave 
undone nothing which I ought to do, in order to pursue that 
single, absorbing, exquisite gratification. I am afraid, sir, you 
think me very foolish. I know the first letter I wrote to you 
was all senseless trash from beginning to end, but I am not al- 
together the idle, dreaming being it would seem to denote. My 
father is a clergyman of limited, though competent, income, 
and I am the eldest of his children. He expended quite as 
much in my education as he could afford in justice to the rest. 
I thought it therefore my duty, when I left school, to become 
a governess. In that capacity I find enough to occupy my 
thoughts all day long, and my head and hands too, without 
havmg a moment's time for one dream of the imagination. In 
the evenings, I confess, I do think, but I never trouble any one 
else with my thoughts. I carefully avoid any appearance of pre- 
occupation and eccentricity, which might lead those I live 
amongst to suspect the nature of my pursuits. Following my 
father's advice, — who from my childhood has counseled me 



34 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

just in the wise and friendly tone of your letter, — I have endeav- 
ored not only attentively to observe all the duties a woman 
ought to fulfill, but to feel deeply interested in them. I don't 
always succeed, for sometimes when I'm teaching or sewing I 
would rather be reading or writing; but I try to deny myself; 
and my father's approbation amply rewarded me for the priva- 
tion. Once more allow me to thank you with sincere gratitude. 

"I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in 
print: if the wish should rise I'll look at Southey's letter, and 
suppress it. It is honor enough for me that I have written to 
him, and received an answer. That letter is consecrated ; no 
one shall ever see it but papa and my brother and sisters. 

''Again I thank you. This incident, I suppose, will be re- 
newed no more; if I live to be an old woman, I shall remem- 
ber it thirty years hence as a bright dream. The signature 
which you suspected of being fictitious is my real name. Again, 
therefore, I must sign myself, "C. Bronte. 

"P. S. Pray, sir, excuse me for writing to you a second 
time; I could not help writing, partly to tell you how thankful 
I am for your kindness, and partly to let you know that your 
advice shall not be wasted; however sorrowfully and reluctantly 
it may be at first followed. *'C. B." 

I cannot deny myself the gratification of inserting Southey's 
reply: 

"Kesv/ick, March 22, 1837. 

**Dear Madam: Your letter has given me great pleasure, 
and I should not forgive myself if I did not tell you so. You 
have received admonition as considerately and as kindly as it 
was given. Let me now request that, if you ever should come 
to these lakes while I am living here, you will let me see you. 

"You would then think of me afterward with more good-will, 
because you would perceive that there is neither severity nor 
moroseness in the state of mind to which years and observation 
have brought me. 

"It is, by God's mercy, in our power to attain a degree of 
self-government, which is essential to our own happiness, and 
contributes greatly to that of those around us. Take care of 
over-excitement, and endeavor to keep a quiet mind (even for 
your health it is the best advice that can be given you): your 
moral and spiritual improvement will then keep pace with the 
culture of your intellectual powers. 

"And now, madam, God bless you! 

* 'Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere friend, 

"Robert Southey," 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 35 

This ''stringent" letter made her ])ut aside, for a time, all 
idea of literary enterprise. She bent her whole energy toward 
the fulfillment of the duties in hand; but her occupation was 
not sufficient food for her great forces of intellect, and they 
cried out perpetually, ''Give, give," while the comparatively 
less breezy air of Dewsbury Moor told upon her health and 
spirits more and more. 

The Christmas holidays came, and she and An.ne returned to 
the parsonage, and to that happy home circle in which alone 
their natures expanded ; amongst all other people they shriveled 
up more or less. Indeed there were only one or two strangers 
who could be admitted among the sisters without producing the 
same result. Emily and Anne were bound up in their lives 
and interests like twins. The former from reserve, the latter 
from timidity, avoided all friendships and intimacies beyond 
their family. Emily was impervious to influence: she never 
came in contact with public opinion, and her own decision of 
what was right and fitting was a law for her conduct and appear- 
ance," with which she allowed no one to interfere. 

Her love was poured out on Anne, as Charlotte's was on her. 

But the affection among all the three was stronger than 
either death or life. 

Charlotte grew much stronger in this quiet, happy period at 
home. She paid occasional visits to her two great friends, and 
they in return came to Haworth. At one of their houses I 
suspect she met with the person to whom the following letter 
refers — some one having a slight resemblance to the character 
of "St. John," in the last volume of "Jane Eyre," and, like 
him, in holy orders. 

"March 12, 1839. 
". . . . I had a kindly leaning toward him, because he is an 
amiable and w^ell-disposed man. Yet I had not, and could not 
have, that intense attachment which would make me willing to 
die for him ; and if ever I marry, it must be in that light of 
adoration that I will regard my husband. Ten to one, I shall 
never have the chance again ; but iiiinporte. Moreover, I was 
aware that he knew so little of me he could hardly be conscious 
to whom he was writing. Why, it would startle him to see me 
in my natural home character; he would think I was a wild, 
romantic enthusiast, indeed. I could not sit all day long 
making a grave face before my husband. I would laugh, and 
satirize, and say whatever came into my head first. And if he 
were a clever man, and loved me, the whole world, weighed in 
the balance against his smallest wish, should be light as air." 



36 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

So that — her first proposal of marriage — was quietly declined 
and put on one side. Matrimony did not enter in the scheme 
of her life, but good, sound, earnest labor did; the question, 
however, was as yet undecided in what direction she should 
employ her forces. She had been discouraged in literature; 
her eyes failed her in the minute kind of drawing which she 
practiced when she wanted to express an idea ; teaching seemed 
to her at this time, as it does to most w^omen at all times, the only 
way of earning an independent livelihood. But neither she nor 
her sisters were naturally fond of children. 

But they were all strong again, and, at any rate, Charlotte 
and Anne must put their shoulders to the wheel. One daughter 
was needed at home, to stay with Mr. Bronte and Miss Bran- 
well ; to be the young and active member in a household of four, 
whereof three — the father, the aunt, and faithful Tabby — were 
past middle age. And Emily, who suffered and drooped more 
than her sisters when away from Haworth, was the one appointed 
to remain. Anne was the first to meet with a situation. 

Charlotte later became engaged as a governess. Her engage- 
ment ended in July of this year ; not before the constant strain on 
her spirits and strength had again affected her health; but 
when this delicacy became apparent in palpitations and short- 
ness of breathing, it was treated as affectation — as a phase of 
imaginary indisposition, which could be dissipated by a good 
scolding. She had been brought up rather in a school of 
Spartan endurance than in one of maudlin self-indulgence, and 
could bear many a pain and relinquish many a hope in silence. 
After she had been at home about a week, her friend ])ro- 
posed that she should accompany her in some little excursion, 
having pleasure alone for its object. She caught at the idea 
most eagerly at first ; but her hope stood still, waned, and had 
almost disappeared before, after many delays, it was realized. 

In its fulfillment, at last, it was a favorable specimen of many 
a similar air-bubble dancing before her eyes in her brief 
career, in which stern realities, rather than pleasures, formed 
the leading incidents. 

I fancy that, about this time, Mr. Bronte found it necessary, 
either from failing health or the increased populousness of the 
parish, to engage the assistance of a curate. At least, it is in 
a letter written this summer that I find mention of the first of a 
succession of curates, who henceforward revolved round the 
Haworth Parsonage, and made an impression on the mind of one 
of its inmates which she has conveyed pretty distinctly to the 
world. The Haworth curate brought his clerical friends and 
neighbors about the place, and for a time the incursions of 



LIFE OP CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 37 

these, near the parsonage tea-time, formed occurrences by 
which the quietness of the life there was varied, sometimes pleas- 
antly, sometimes disagreeably. The little adventure recorded 
in the following letter is uncommon in the lot of most women, 
and is a testimony in this case to the unusual power of attrac- 
tion — though so plain in feature — which Charlotte possessed, 
wdien she let herself go in the happiness and freedom of home. 

''August 4, 1839. 

*'....! have an odd circumstance to relate to you: prepare 

for a hearty laugh! The other day, Mr. , a vicar, came to 

spend the day wath us, bringing w^ith him his owai curate. The 
latter gentleman, by name Mr. B., is a young Irish clergyman, 
fresh from Dublin University. It was the first time we had 
any of us seen him, but, how^ever, after the manner of his coun- 
trymen, he soon made himself at home. His character quickly 
appeared in his conversation; wTtty, lively, ardent, clever 
too; but deficient in the dignity and discretion of an English- 
man. At home, you know, I talk wdth ease, and am never shy 
— never w^eighed down and oppressed by that miserable maicvaise 
honte which torments and constrains me elsew^here. So I con- 
versed with this Irishman, and laughed at his jests ; and, though 
I saw faults in his character, excused them because of the 
amivsement his originality afforded. I cooled a little, indeed, 
and drew in toward the latter part of the evening, because he 
began to season his conversation with something of Hibernian 
flattery, which I did not quite relish. However, they went 
away, and no more was thought about them. A few days after 
I got a letter, the direction of which puzzled me, it being in a 
hand I was not accustomed to see. Evidently, it was neither 
from you nor Mary, my only correspondents. Having opened 
and read it, it proved to be a declaration of attachment and 
proposal of matrimony, expressed in the ardent language of 
the sapient young Irishman ! I hope you are laughing heartily. 
This is not like one of my adventures, is it? It more nearly 
resembles Martha's. I am certainly doomed to be an old maid. 
Never mind. I made up my mind to that fate ever since I 
was twelve years old. 

"Well! thought I, I have heard of love at first sight, but this 
beats all! I leave you to guess what my answer would be, 
convinced that you will not do me the injustice of guessing 
wrong." 

At the time of which I w^ite, the favorite idea w^as that of 
keeping a school. They thought that by a little contrivance, 



;^S LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE;. 

and a very little additional building, a small number of pupils, 
four or six, might be accommodated in the parsonage. As 
teaching seemed the only profession open to them, and as it 
appeared that Emily at least could not live away from home, 
while the others also suffered much from the same cause, this 
plan of school-keeping presented itself as most desirable. But 
it involved some outlay; and to this their aunt was averse. 
Yet there was no one to whom they could apply for a loan 
of the requisite means, except Miss Branwell, who had made a 
small store out of her savings, which she intended for her 
nephew and nieces eventually, but which she did not like to 
risk. Still, this plan of school-keeping remained uppermost; 
and in the evenings of this winter of 1839-40, the alterations 
that would be necessary in the house, and the best way of con- 
vincing their aunt of the wisdom of their project, formed the 
principal subject of their conversation. 

During this winter, Charlotte employed her leisure hours 
in writing a story. Some fragments of the manuscript yet 
remain, but it is too small a hand to be read without great 
fatigue to the eyes ; and one cares the less to read it, as she 
herself condemned it, in the preface to the "Professor,'' by 
saying that in this story she had got over such taste as -she 
might once have had for the ' 'ornamental and redundant in com- 
position." The beginning, too, as she acknowledges, was. on a 
scale commensurate with one of Richardson's novels of seven 
or eight volumes. I gather some of these particulars from a 
copy of a letter, apparently in reply to one from Wordsworth, 
to whom she had sent the announcement of the story some 
time in the summer of 1840. 

Early in March, 1841, Miss Bronte obtained her second 
and last situation as a governess. This time she esteemed her- 
self fortunate in becoming a member of a kindhearted and 
friendly household. The master of it she especially regarded 
as a valuable friend, whose advice helped to guide her in one 
very important step of her life. But as her definite acquire- 
ments were few, she had to eke them out by employing her 
leisure time in needlework ; and altogether her position was 
that of "bonne," or nursery governess, liable to repeated 
and never-ending calls upon her time. 

Miss Bronte had not been many v/eeks in her new situation 
before she had a proof of the kindhearted hospitality of her 

employers. Mr. wrote to her father and urgently invited 

him to come and make acquaintance with his daughter's new 

home by spending a week with her in it; and Mrs. 

expressed great regret when one of Miss Bronte's friends 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 39 

drove up to the house, to leave a letter or parcel, without 
entering. So she soon found that all her friends might freely 
visit her, and that her father would be received with especial 
gladness. She thankfully acknowledged this kindness in writ- 
ing to urge her friend afresh to come and see her; which she 
accordingly did. 

"June, 1841. 

"Mr. and Mrs. have been gone a week. I heard from 

them this morning. No time is fixed for their return, but I 
hope it will not be delayed long, or I shall miss the chance of 
seeing Anne this vacation. She came home, I understand, last 
Wednesday, and is only to be allowed three weeks' vacation, 
because the family she is with are going to Scarborough. / 
should like to see her^ to judge for myself of the state of her 
health. I dare not trust any other person's report, no one 
seems minute enough in their observations. I should very 
much have liked you to have seen her. I have got on very 
well with the servants and children so far ; yet it is dreary, 
solitary work. You can tell as well as me the lonely feeling of 
being without a companion." 

Soon after this was written, Mr. and Mrs. returned, in 

time to allow Charlotte to go and look after Anne's health, 
which, as she found to her intense anxiety, was far from strong. 
What could she do to nurse and cherish up this little 
sister, the youngest of them all? Apprehension about her 
brought up once more the idea of keeping a school. If, by 
this means, they three could live together, and maintain them- 
selves, all might go well. They would have some time of 
their own, in which to try again, and yet again, at that literary 
career, which, in spite of all baffling difficulties, was never 
quite set aside as an ultimate object; but far the strongest 
motive with Charlotte was the conviction that Anne's health 
was so delicate that it required a degree of tending w^hich none 
but her sister could give. Thus she wrote during those mid- 
summer holidays. 

"Haworth, July t8, 1841. 

"We waited long and anxiously for you on the Thursday 
that you promised to come. I quite wearied my eyes with 
watching from the window, eye-glass in hand, and sometimes 
spectacles on nose. However, you are not to blame .... 
and as to disappointment, why, all must suffer disappointment 
at some period or other of their lives. But a hundred things 
I had to say to you will now be forgotten, and never said. 
There is a project hatching in this house, which both Emily 



40 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

and I anxiously wished to discuss with you. The project is 
yet in its infancy, hardly peeping from its shell; and whether 
it will ever come out a fine full-fledged chicken, or will turn, 
addle, and die before it cheeps, is one of those considerations 
that are but dimly revealed by the oracles of futurity. Now, 
don't be nonplussed by all this metaphorical mystery. I talk 
of a plain and every-day occurrence, though in Delphic style. 
I wrap up the information in figures of speech concerning 
eggs, chickens, etcetera, etceterorum. To come to the point: 
Papa and aunt talk, by fits and starts, of our — id est^ Emily, 
Anne, and myself — commencing a school! I have often, you 
know, said how much I wished such a thing; but 1 never could 
conceive where the capital was to come from for making such 
a speculation. I was well aware, indeed, that aunt had money, 
but I always considered that she was the last person who 
would offer a loan for the purpose in question. A loan, how- 
ever, she has offered, or rather intimates that she 7vill perhaps 
offer in case pupils can be secured, an eligible situation obtained, 
etc. This sounds very fair, but still there are matters to be 
considered which throw somethingof a damp upon the scheme. 
I do not expect that aunt will sink more than £150 in such 
a venture; and would it be possible to establish a respectable 
(not by any means a showy) school, and to commence house- 
keeping with a capital of only that amount? Propound the 
question to your sister, if you think she can answer it ; if not, 
don't say a word on the subject. As to getting into debt, that 
is a thing we could none of us reconcile our mind to for a 
moment. We do not care how modest, how humble our com- 
mencement be, so it be made on sure grounds, and have a safe 
foundation. In thinking of all possible and impossible places 
where we could establish a school, I have thought of Bur- 
lington, or rather of the neighborhood of Burlington. Do you 
remember whether there was any other school there besides 

that of Miss 1 This is, of course, a perfectly crude and 

random idea. There are a hundred reasons why it should be 
an impracticable one. We have no connections, no acquaint- 
ances there; it is far from home, etc. Still, I fancy the 
ground in the East Riding is less fully occupied than in the 
West. Much inquiry and consideration will be necessary, of 
course, before any place is decided on ; and I fear much time 

will elapse before any plan is executed Write as soon 

as you can. I shall not leave my present situation till my 
future prospects assume a more fixed and definite aspect.'' 

Just about this time, Miss W was thinking of relin= 



LIFE OF CHART. OTTF BRONTE. 4I 

quishing her school at Dewsbury Moor; and offered to give 
it up in favor of her old pupils, the Brontes. A sister of hers 
had taken the active management since the time when Charlotte 
was a teacher; but the number of pupils had diminished; 
and, if the Brontes undertook it,^they would have to try and 
work it up to its former state of prosperity. This, again, 
would require advantages on their part which they did not 
at present possess, but which Charlotte caught a glimpse 
of. She resolved to follow the clew, and never to rest till 
she had reached a successful issue. With the forced calm 
of a suppressed eagerness that sends a glow of desire 
through every word of the following letter, she wrote to her 
aunt thus : 

''September 29, 1841. 

*'Dear Aunt: I have heard nothing of MissW yet since 

I wrote to her, intimating that I w^ould accept her offer. I 
cannot conjecture the reason of this long silence, unless some 
unforeseen impediment has occurred in concluding the bargain. 
Meantime, a plan has been suggested and approved by Mr. 

and Mrs. [the father and mother of her pupils] and others, 

which I wish now to impart to you. My friends recommend 
me, if I desire to secure permanent success, to delay com- 
mencing the school for six months longer, and by all means to 
contrive, by hook or by crook, to spend the intervening time 
in some school on the continent. They say schools in England 
are so numerous, competition so great, that without some such 
step toward obtaining superiority we shall probably have a 
very hard struggle, and may fail in the end. They say, 
moreover, that the loan of £100, which you have been so kind 
as to offer us, will, perhaps, not be all required now, as Miss 

W will lend us the furniture ; and that, if the speculation 

is intended to be a good and successful one, half the sum, at 
least, ought to be laid out in the manner I have mentioned, 
thereby insuring a more speedy repayment both of interest 
and principal. 

*T would not go to France or to Paris. I would go to Brussels 
in Belgium. The cost of the journey there, at the dearest rate 
of traveling, would be £5 ; living is there little more than half 
as dear as it is in England, and the facilities for education are 
equal or superior to any other place in Europe. In half a 
year I could acquire a thorough familiarity with French. I 
could improve greatly in Italian, and even get a dash of Ger- 
man ; /. ^., providing my health continued as good as it is now. 
Mary is now staying at Brussels, at a first-rate establishment 
there. I should not think of going to the Chateau de Kokle- 



42 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

berg, where she is resident, as the terms are much too high ; but 
if I wrote to her, she, with the assistance of Mrs. Jenkins, the 
wife of the British chaplain, would be able to secure me a 
cheap, decent residence and respectable protection. I should 
have the opportunity of seeing her frequently; she would make 
me acquainted with the city; and, with the assistance of her 
cousins, I should probably be introduced to connections far 
more improving, polished, and cultivated than any I have yet 
known. 

"These are advantages which would turn to real account 
when we actually commenced a school; and, if Emily could 
share them with me, we could take a footing in the world after- 
ward which we can never do now. I say Emily instead of 
Anne ; for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if 
our school answered. I feel certain, while I am writing, that 
you will see the propriety of what I say. You always like to 
use your money to the best advantage. You are not fond of 
making shabby purchases; when you do confer a favor, it is 
often done in style; and, depend upon it, £50, or £100, thus 
laid out, would be well employed. Of course, I know no 
other friend in the world to whom I could apply, on this subject, 
except yourself. I feel an absolute conviction that, if this 
advantage were allowed us, it would be the making of us for 
life. Papa will, perhaps, think it a wild and ambitious scheme ; 
but who ever rose in the world without ambition? When he 
left Ireland to go to Cambridge University, he was as ambitious 
as I am now. I want us all to get on. I know we have 
talents, and I want them to be turned to account. I look to 
you. Aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse. I know, 
if you consent, it shall not be my fault if you ever repent your 
kindness." 

This letter was written from the house in which she was re- 
siding as governess. It was some little time before an answer 
came. Much had to be talked over between the father and 
aunt in Haworth Parsonage. At last consent was given. 
Then, and not till then, she confided her plan to an intimate 
friend. She was not one to talk over-much about any project 
while it remained uncertain; to speak about her labor, in any 
direction, while its result was doubtful. 

At Christmas she left her situation, after a parting with her 
employers, which seems to have affected and touched her 
greatly. "They only made too much of me," was her remark, 
after leaving this family; "I did not deserve it." 

All four children hoped to meet together at their father's 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE URONTE. 43 

house this December. Branwell expected to have a short 
leave of absence from his employment as a clerk on the Leeds 
and Manchester Railway, in which he had been engaged for 
five months. Anne arrived before Christmas Day. She had 
rendered herself so valuable in her difficult situation that her 
employers vehemently urged her return, although she had 
announced her resolution to leave them; partly on account of 
the harsh treatment she had received, and partly because her 
stay at home, during her sisters* absence in Belgium, seemed 
desirable, when the age of the three remaining inhabitants of the 
parsonage was taken into consideration. 

After some correspondence, and much talking over plans 
at home, it seemed better, in consequence of letters which 
they received from Brussels giving a discouraging account of 
the schools there, that Charlotte and Emily should go to an 
institution at Lille, in the north of France, which was highly 
recommended by Baptist Noel, and other clergymen. Indeed, 
at the end of January, it was arranged that they were to set off 
for this place in three weeks, under the escort of a French 
lady, then visiting in London. The terms were £50 each pu- 
pil, for board and French alone, but a separate room was to 
be allowed for this sum; without this indulgence, it was lower. 



CHAPTER V. 

I AM not aware of all the circumstances which led to the 
relinquishment of the Lille plan. Brussels had had from the 
first a strong attraction for Charlotte ; and the idea of going 
there, in preference to any other place, had only been given 
up in consequence of the information received of the second- 
rate character of its schools. In one of her letters reference 
has been made to Mrs. Jenkins, the wife of the chaplain of the 
British Embassy. At the request of his brother — a clergyman, 
living not many miles from Haworth, and an acquaintance of 
Mr. Bronte's — she made much inquiry, and at length, after 
some discouragement in her search, heard of a school which 
seemed in every respect desirable. There was an English lady, 
who had long lived in the Orleans family, amidst the various 
fluctations of their fortunes, and who, when the Princess Louise 
was married to King Leopold, accompanied her to Brussels, 
in the capacity of reader. This lady's granddaughter was re- 
ceiving her education at the pensionnat of Madame Heger ; and 
so satisfied was the grandmother with the kind of instruction 
given^ that she named the establishment, with high encomiums^ 



44 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

to Mrs. Jenkins; and, in consequence, it was decided that, if 
the terms suited, Miss Bronte and Emily should proceed 
thither. M. Heger informs me that, on receipt of a letter from 
Charlotte, making very particular inquiries as to the possible 
amount of what are usually termed "extras," he and his wife 
were so much struck by the simple, earnest tone of the letter, 
that they said to each other: "These are the daughters of an 
English pastor, of moderate means, anxious to learn with an 
ulterior view of instructing others, and to whom the risk of 
additional expense is of great consequence. Let us name a 
specific sum, within which all expenses shall be included." 

This was accordingly done; the agreement was concluded, 
and the Brontes prepared to leave their native county for the 
first time, if we except the melancholy and memorable residence 
at Cowan Bridge. Mr. Bronte determined to accompany his 
daughters. Mary and her brother, who were experienced in 
foreign traveling, were also of the party. Charlotte first saw 
London in the day or two they now stopped there ; and, from 
an expression in one of her subsequent letters, they all, I be- 
lieve, stayed at the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row — a 
strange, old-fashioned tavern, of which I shall have more to 
say hereafter. 

Mary's account of their journey is thus given: 

"In passing through London, she seemed to think our busi- 
ness was, and ought to be, to. see all the pictures and statues 
we could. She knew the artists, and knew where other pro- 
ductions of theirs were to be found. I don't remember what we 
saw except St. Paul's. Emily was like her in these habits of 
mind, but certainly never took her opinion, but always had 

one to offer I don't know what Charlotte thought of 

Brussels. We arrived in the dark, and went next morning to 
our respective schools to see them. We were, of course, much 
preoccupied, and our prospects gloomy. Charlotte used to 
like the country round Brussels. *At the top of every hill 
you see something.' She took long, solitary walks on the 
occasional holidays." 

Mr. Bronte took his daughters to the Rue d'Isabelle, Brus- 
sels; remained one night at Mr. Jenkins's; and straight re- 
turned to his wild Yorkshire village. 

" Brussels, 1842. 
** I consider it doubtful whether I shall come home in Sep- 
tember or not. Madame Heger has made a proposal for both 
me and Emily to stay another half year, offering to dismiss 
her English master and take me as English teacher ; also to 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 45 

employ Emily some part of each day in teaching music to a 
certain number of the pupils. For tliese services we are to be 
allowed to continue our studies in French and German, and to 
have board, etc., without paying for it ; no salaries, however, 
are offered. The proposal is kind, and in a great selfish city 
like Brussels, and a great selfish school, containing nearly 
ninety pupils (boarders and day pupils included), implies a 
degree of interest which demands gratitude in return. I am 
inclined to accept it. What think you? I don't deny I some- 
times wish to be in England, or that I have brief attacks of 
homesickness ; but, on the whole, I have borne a very valiant 
heart so far ; and I have been happy in Brussels, because I 
have always been fully occupied with the employments that I 
like. Emily is making rapid progress in French, German, 
music, and drawing. Monsieur and Madame Heger begin to 
recognize the valuable parts of her character, under her singu- 
larities '' 

When the Brontes first w^ent to Brussels, it was with the in- 
tention of remaining there for six months, or until \\\^ grandes 
vacances began in September. The duties of the school were 
then suspended for six weeks or two months, and it seemed a 
desirable period for their return. But the proposal mentioned 
in the foregoing letter altered their plans. Besides, they were 
happy in the feeling that they were making progress in all the 
knowledge they had so long been yearning to acquire. They 
were happy, too, in possessing friends whose society had been 
for years congenial to them ; and, in occasional meetings with 
these, they could have the inexpressible solace to res- 
idents in a foreign country — and peculiarly such to the 
Brontes — of talking over the intelligence received from their 
respective homes — referring to past, or planning for future 
days. "Maryland her sister, the bright, dancing, laughing 
Martha, were parlor boarders in an establishment just beyond 
the barriers of Brussels. Again, the cousins of these friends 
were resident in the town ; and at their house Charlotte and 
Emily were always welcome, though their overpowering shyness 
prevented their more valuable qualities from being known, and 
generally kept them silent. They spent their weekly holiday 
with this family for many months : but, at the end of the time, 
Emily was as impenetrable to friendly advances as at the be- 
ginning ; while Charlotte was too physically weak (as "Mary" 
has expressed it) to "gather up her forces" sufficiently to ex- 
press any difference or opposition of opinion, and had conse- 
quently an assenting and deferential manner, strangely at vari- 



46 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

ance with what they knew of her remarkable talents and de- 
cided character. At this house, the T.s and the Brontes could 
look forward to meeting each other pretty frequently. There 
was another English family where Charlotte soon became a wel- 
come guest, and where, I suspect, she felt herself more at her 
ease than either at Mrs. Jenkins's, or the friends whom I have 
first mentioned. 

An English physician, with a large family of daughters, went 
to reside at Brussels for the sake of their education. He 
placed them at Madame Heger's school in July, 1842, not a 
month before the beginning of thQ granges vacaiices on August 
15. In order to make the most of their time, and become 
accustomed to the language, these English sisters w^ent daily, 
through the holidays, to the pensionnat in the Rue d'lsabelle. 
Six or eight boarders remained, besides the Misses Bronte. 
They were there during the whole time, never even having the 
break to their monotonous life which passing an occasional 
day with a friend would have afforded them ; but devoting 
themselves with indefatigable diligence to the different studies 
in which they were engaged. Their position in the school ap- 
peared, to these newcomers, analogous to what is often called 
that of a parlor boarder. They prepared their French, drawing, 
German, and literature for their various masters ; and to these 
occupations Emily added that of music, in which she was 
somewhat of a proficient ; so much so as to be qualified to 
give instruction in it to the three younger sisters of my infor- 
mant. 

The first break in this life of regular duties and employ- 
ments came heavily and sadly. Martha — pretty, winning, mis- 
chievous, tricksome Martha — was taken ill suddenly at the 
Chateau de Koekelberg. Her sister tended her with devoted 
love ; but it was all in vain ; in a few days she died. 

Who that has read *' Shirley " does not remember the few 
lines — perhaps half a page — of sad recollection ? 

^* He has no idea that little Jessy will die young, she is so 
gay, and chattering, and arch — original even now ; passionate 
when provoked, but most affectionate if caressed ; by turns 
gentle and rattling ; exacting yet generous; fearless .... yet 
reliant on any who will help her. Jessy, with her little, piquant 
face, engaging prattle, and winning ways, is made to be a pet. 



** Do you know this place ? No, you never saw it ; but you 
recognize the nature of these trees, this foliage — the cypress, 
the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are not unfamil- 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE liRONTE. 47 

iar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers. 
Here is the place ; green sod and a gray marble headstone — 
Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day ; much 
loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed 
tears — she had frequent sorrows ; she smiled between, gladden- 
ing whatever saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in 
Rose's guardian arms, for Rose had been her stay and defense 
through many trials ; the dying and the watching English girls 
were at that hour alone in a foreign country, and the soil of 
that country gave Jessy a grave. 



*'But, Jessy, I will write about you no more. This is an 
autumn evening, wet and wild. There is only one cloud in 
the sky ; but it curtains it from pole to pole. The wind can- 
not rest ; it hurries sobbing over hills of sullen outline, color- 
less with twilight and mist. Rain has beat all day on that 
church tower" (Haworth) ; ** it rises dark from the stony in- 
closure of its graveyard ; the nettles, the long grass, and the 
tombs all drip with wet. This evening reminds me too forcibly 
of another evening some years ago : a howling, rainy autumn 
evening, too — when certain who had that day performed a pil- 
grimage to a grave new made in a heretic cemetery, sat near a 
wood fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were 
merry and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be 
filled, had been made in their circle. They knew they had lost 
something whose absence could never be quite atoned for so 
long as they lived ; and they knew that heavy falling rain was 
soaking into the wet earth which covered their lost darling ; 
and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above her buried 
head. The fire warmed them ; Life and Friendship yet 
blessed them ; but Jessy lay cold, coffined, solitary — only the 
sod screening her from the storm." 

This was the first death that had occurred in the small circle 
of Charlotte's immediate and intimate friends since the loss of 
her two sisters long ago. She was still in the midst of her deep 
sympathy with ** Mary," when word came from home that her 
aunt. Miss Branwell, was ailing — was very ill. Emily and 
Charlotte immediately resolved to go home straight, and has- 
tily packed up for England, doubtful whether they should ever 
return to Brussels or not, leaving all their relations with M. 
and Madame Heger, and the pensionnat, uprooted, and un- 
certain of any future existence. Even before their departure, 
on the morning after they received the first intelligence of 
illness — when they were on the very point of starting — came 



48 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, 

a second letter, telling them of their aunt's death. It could 
not hasten their movements, for every arrangement had been 
made for speed. They sailed from Antwerp ; they traveled 
night and day, and got home on a Tuesday morning. The 
funeral and all was over, and Mr. Bronte and Anne were sit- 
ting together, in quiet grief for the loss of one who had done 
her part well in their household for nearly twenty years, and 
earned the regard and respect of many who never knew how 
much tliey should miss her till she was gone. The small prop- 
erty which she had accumulated, by dint of personal frugality 
and self-denial, was bequeathed to her nieces. Branwell, her 
darling, was to have had his share ; but his reckless expendi- 
ture had distressed the good old lady, and his name was omitted 
in her will. 

AVhen the first shock was over, the three sisters began to en- 
joy the full relish of meeting again, after the longest separa- 
tion they had had in their lives. They had much to tell of the 
past, and much to settle for the future. Anne had been for 
some little time in a situation, to which she was to return at 
the end of the Christmas holidays. For another year or so 
they were again to be all three apart ; and, after that, the 
happy vision of being together and opening a school was to be 
realized. Of course they did not now look forward to settling 
at Burlington, or any other place which would take them away 
from their father ; but the small sum which they each inde- 
pendently possessed would enable them to effect such altera- 
tions in the parsonage house at Haworth as would adapt it to the 
reception of pupils. Anne's plans for the interval were fixed. 
Emily quickly decided to be the daughter to remain at home. 
About Charlotte there was much deliberation and some dis- 
cussion. 

Even in all the haste of their sudden departure from Brussels, 
M. Heger had found time to write a letter of sympathy to Mr. 
Bronte on the loss which he had just sustained ; a letter con- 
taining a graceful appreciation of the daughters' characters, also 
a proposal respecting Charlotte. 

There was so much truth, as well as so much kindness in 
this letter — it was so obvious that a second year of instruction 
would be far more valuable than the first, that there was no long 
hesitation before it was decided that Charlotte should return 
to Brussels. 

Meanwhile, they enjoyed their Christmas all together inex- 
pressibly. Branwell was with them ; that was always a pleasure 
at this time ; whatever might be his faults, or even his vices, 
his sisters yet held him up as their family hope, as they trusted 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 49 

that he would some day be their family pride. They blinded 
themselves to the magnitude of the failings of which they were 
now and then told, by persuading themselves that such fail- 
ings were common to all men of any strength of character ; 
for, till sad experience taught them better, they fell into the 
usual error of confounding strong passions with strong charac- 
ter. 

Charlotte's friend came over to see her, and she returned 
the visit. Her Brussels life must have seemed like a dream, 
so completely, in this short space of time, did she fall back 
into the old household ways ; with more of household indepen- 
dence than she could ever have had during her aunt's lifetime. 
Winter though it was, the sisters took their accustomed walks 
on the snow-covered moors ; or went often down the long road 
to Keighley for such books as had been added to the library 
there during their absence from England. 

Toward the end of January, the time came for Charlotte 
to return to Brussels. Her journey thither was rather disas- 
trous. She had to make her way alone ; and the train from 
Leeds to London, which should have reached Euston Square 
early in the afternoon, was so much delayed that it did not get 
in till ten at night. She had intended to seek out the Chapter 
Coffee-house, where she had stayed before, and which would 
have been near the place where the steamboats lay ; but she 
appears to have been frightened by the idea of arriving at an 
hour which, to Yorkshire notions, was so late and unseemly ; 
and taking a cab, therefore, at the station, she drove straight to 
the London Bridge Wharf, and desired a waterman to row her 
to the Ostend packet, which was to sail the next morning. She 
described to me, pretty much as she has since described it in 
^' Villette," her sense of loneliness, and yet her strange pleasure 
in the excitement of the situation, as in the dead of that win- 
ter's night she went swiftly over the dark river to the black 
hull's side, and was at first refused leave to ascend to the deck. 
'* No passengers might sleep on board," they said, with some 
appearance of disrespect. She looked back to the lights and 
subdued noises of London — that " Mighty Heart" in which she 
had no place — and, standing up in the rocking boat, she asked 
to speak to some one in authority on board the packet. He 
came, and her quiet, simple statement of her wish, and lier rea- 
son for it, quelled the feeling of sneering distrust in those who 
had first heard her request ; and impressed the authority so 
favorably that he allowed her to come on board, and take pos- 
session of a berth. The next morning she sailed ; and at seven 
on Sunday evening she reached the Rue d'Isabelle once more ; 



50 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

having only left Haworth on Friday morning at an early 
hour. 

Her salary was ;£i6 a year, out of which she had to pay for 
her German lessons, for which she was charged as much (the 
lessons being probably rated by time) as when Emily learnt 
with her and divided the expense ; viz., ten francs a month. 
By Miss Bronte's own desire, she gave her English lessons in 
the classe^ or schoolroom, without the supervision of Madame 
or i\I. Heger. 

She now felt she had made great progress toward obtain- 
ing proficiency in the French language, which had been her 
main object in coming to Brussels. But to the zealous learner 
*' Alps on Alps arise." No sooner is one difficulty surmounted 
than some other desirable attainment appears, and must be 
labored after. A knowledge of German now became her 
object ; and she resolved to compel herself to remain in Brus- 
sels till that was gained. The strong yearning to go home 
came upon her ; the stronger self-denying will forbade. There 
was a great internal struggle ; every fiber of her heart quivered 
in the strain to master her will ; and when she conquered 
herself, she remained not like a victor, calm and supreme on the 
throne, but like a panting, torn, and suffering victim. Her nerves 
and her spirits gave way. Her health became much shaken. 

One of the reasons for the silent estrangement between 
Madame Heger and Miss Bronte, in the second year of her 
residence at Brussels, is to be found in the fact that the Eng- 
lish Protestant's dislike of Romanism increased with her know- 
ledge of it, and its effects upon those who professed it ; and 
when occasion called for an expression of opinion from Char- 
lotte Bronte, she was uncompromising truth. Madame Heger, 
on the opposite side, was not merely a Roman Catholic, she was 
devote. Not of a warm or impulsive temperament, she was nat- 
urally governed by her conscience, rather than by her affec- 
tions ; and her conscience was in the hands of her religious 
guides. She considered any slight thrown upon her church 
as blasphemy against the Holy Truth ; and though she was 
not given to open expression of her thoughts and feelings, yet 
her increasing coolness of behavior showed how much her 
most cherished opinions had been wounded. Thus, although 
there was never any explanation of Madame Heger's change 
of manner, this may be given as one great reason why, about 
this time, Charlotte was made painfully conscious of a silent 
estrangement between them ; an estrangement of which, per- 
haps, the former was hardly aware. I have before alluded to 
intelligence from home, calculated to distress Charlotte exceed- 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 5T 

ingly with fears respecting Branwell, which I shall speak of 
more at large when the realization of her worst apprehensions 
came to affect the daily life of herself and her sisters. I allude 
to the subject again here, in order that the reader may remem- 
ber the gnawing private cares which she had to bury in her own 
heart ; and the pain of which could only be smothered for a 
time under the diligent fulfillment of present duty. Another 
dim sorrow was faintly perceived at this time. Her father's 
eyesight began to fail ; it was not unlikely that he might shortly 
become blind ; more of his duty must devolve on a curate, 
and Mr. Bronte, always liberal, would have to pay at a higher 
rate than he had heretofore done for this assistance. 

She wrote thus to Emily : 

^/ December i, 1843. 

*^ This is Sunday morning. They are at their idolatrous 
*messe,' and I am here, that is in the refectoire. I should 
like uncommonly to be in the dining-room at home, or in the 
kitchen, or in the back kitchen. I should like even to be cut- 
ting up the hash, with the clerk and some register people at 
the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put 
enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save 
the best pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the 
first of which personages would be jumping about the dish and 
carving-knife, and the latter standing like a devouring flame 
upon the kitchen floor. To complete the picture. Tabby blow- 
ing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a sort of vegetable 
glue ! How divine are these recollections to me at this 
moment ! Yet I have no thought of coming home just now. 
I lack a real pretext for doing so ; it is true this place is dismal 
to me, but I cannot go home without a fixed prospect when I 
get there ; and this prospect must not be a situation ; that 
would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Vou call 
yourself idle ! absurd, absurd ! .... Is papa well ? are you 
well ? and Tabby ? You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to 
Brussels. I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue 
Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers. She was 
laughing and talking very gayly. She looked a little stout, vi- 
vacious lady, very plainly dressed ; not much dignity or preten- 
sion about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the whole. 
They said she enlivened the somber court of King Leopold, 
which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle. Write to me again 
soon. Tell me whether papa really wants me very much to 
come home, and whether you do likewise. I have an idea that 
I should be of no use there — a sort of aged person upon the 
parish. I pray with heart and soul that all may continue well 



52 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

at Haworth ; above all in our gray, half-inhabited house. God 
bless the walls thereof ! Safety, health, happiness, and pros- 
perity to you, papa, and Tabby. Amen. C. B." 

Toward the end of this year (1843), various reasons con- 
spired, with the causes of anxiety which have been mentioned, 
to make her feel that her presence was absolutely and im- 
peratively required at home, while she had acquired all that 
she proposed to herself in coming to Brussels the second time ; 
and was, moreover, no longer regarded with the former kindli- 
ness of feeling by Madame Heger. In consequence of this 
state of things working down wuth sharp edge into a sensitive 
mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her immediate in- 
tention of returning to England. Both M. and Madame Heger 
agreed that it would be for the best, w^hen they learnt only that 
part of the case which she could reveal to them — namely, 
Mr. Bronte's increasing blindness. But as the inevitable mo- 
ment of separation from people and places among which she 
had spent so many happy hours drew near, her spirits gave 
w^ay ; she had the natural presentiment that she saw them all 
for the last time, and she received but a dead kind of comfort 
from being reminded by her friends that Brussels and Haworth 
were not so very far apart ; that access from one place to the 
other was not so difficult or impracticable as her tears would 
seem to predicate ; nay, there w^as some talk of one of Madame 
Heger's daughters being sent to her as a pupil if she fulfilled 
her intention of trying to begin a school. To facilitate her suc- 
cess in this plan, should she ever engage in it, M. Heger gave 
her a kind of diploma, dated from, and sealed with the seal of 
the Athenee Royal de Bruxelles, certifying that she was per- 
fectly capable of teaching the French language, having well 
studied the grammar and composition thereof, and, moreover, 
having prepared herself for teaching by studying and prac- 
ticing the best methods of instruction. This certificate is 
dated December 29, 1843, and on the 2d of January, 1844, 
she arrived at Haworth. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The moors were a great resource this spring ; Emily and 
Charlotte walked out on them perpetually, *' to the great 
damage of our shoes, but, I hope, to the benefit of our health." 
The old plan of school-keeping was often discussed in these 
rambles ; but indoors they set with vigor to shirt-making for 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 53 

the absent Branwell, and pondered in silence over their past 
and future life. At last they came to a determination. 

'^ I have seriously entered into the enterprise of keeping a 
school — or, rather, taking a limited number of pupils at home. 
That is, I have begun in good earnest to seek for pupils. I 

wrote to Mrs. " (the lady with whom she had lived as 

governess, just before going to Brussels) '* not asking her for 
her daughter — I cannot do that — but informing her of my in- 
tention. I received an answer from Mr. expressive of, I 

believe, sincere regret that I had not informed them a month 
sooner, in which case, he said, they would gladly have sent me 
their own daughter, and also Colonel S.'s, but that now both 
were promised to Miss C." 

There were, probably, growing up in each sister's heart, se- 
cret unacknowledged feelings of relief that their plan had not 
succeeded. Yes ! a dull sense of relief that their cherished 
project had been tried and had failed. For that house, which 
was to be regarded as an occasional home for their brother, 
could hardly be a fitting residence for the children of strangers. 
They had, in all likelihood, become silently aware that his 
habits were such as to render his society at times most undesir- 
able. Possibly, too, they had, by this time, heard distressing 
rumors concerning the cause of that remorse and agony of 
mind, which at times made him restless and unnaturally merry, 
at times rendered him moody and irritable. 

For the last three years of Branwell's life he took opium 
habitually, by wa,y of stunning conscience ; he drank, more- 
over, whenever he could get the opportunity. The reader may 
say that I have mentioned his tendency to intemperance long 
before. It is true ; but it did not become habitual, as far as I 
can learn, until after he was dismissed from his tutorship. He 
took opium, because it made him forget for a time more effect- 
ually than drink ; and, besides, it was more portable. In pro- 
curing it, he showed all the cunning of the opium-eater. He 
would steal out while the family were at church — to which he 
had professed himself too ill to go — and manage to cajole the 
village druggist out of a lump ; or, it might be, the carrier had 
unsuspiciously brought him some in a packet from a distance. 
For some time before his death, he had attacks of delirium 
tremens of the most frightful character ; he slept in his father's 
room, and he would sometimes declare that either he or his 
father should be dead before morning. The trembling sisters, 
sick with fright, w^ould implore their father not to expose him- 
self to this danger ; but Mr. Bronte was no timid man, and per- 



54 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

haps he felt that he could possibly influence his son to some 
self-restraint more by showing trust in him than by showing 
fear. The sisters often listened for the report of a pistol in 
the dead of the night, till watchful eye and barkening ear grew 
heavy and dull with the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In 
the mornings young Bronte would saunter out, saying, with a 
drunkard's incontinence of speech, '^ The poor old man and I 
have had a terrible night of it ; he does his best — the poor old 
man ! but it's all over with me." 



CHAPTER VII. 

In the course of this sad autumn of 1845, a new interest 
came up ; faint, indeed, and often lost sight of in the vivid pain 
and constant pressure of anxiety respecting their brother. In 
the biographical notice of her sisters which Charlotte prefixed 
to the edition of '*Wuthering Heights" and ** Agnes Grey," 
published in*i85o, — a piece of writing unique, as far as I know, 
in its pathos and its power, — she says : 

^'One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on 
a MS. volume of verse, in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of 
course I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did 
write verse ; I looked it over, and something more than sur- 
prise seized me — a deep conviction that these were not common 
effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I 
thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To 
my ear they had also a peculiar music — wild, melancholy, and 
elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative 
character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings 
even those nearest and dearest to her could, with impunity, in- 
trude unlicensed ; it took hours to reconcile her to the dis- 
covery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems 

merited publication Meantime, my younger sister 

quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that 
since Emily's had given me pleasure I might like to look at 
hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that 
these verses, too, had a sweet sincere pathos of their own. 
We had very early cherished the dream of one day being 

authors We agreed to arrange a small selection of our 

poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal 
publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, 
Ellis, and Acton Bell ; the ambiguous choice being dictated by 
a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names, 
positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 5^ 

women, because — without at the time suspecting that our mode 
of writing and thinking was not what is called ' feminine ' — we 
had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked 
on with prejudice ; we noticed how critics sometimes use for 
their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their re- 
ward, a flattery which is not true praise. The bringing out of 
our little book was hard work. As was to be expected, neither 
we nor our poems were at all wanted ; but for this we had been 
prepared at the outset ; though inexperienced ourselves, we had 
read the experience of others. The great puzzle lay in the 
difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers to 
whom we applied. Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, I 
ventured to apply to the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, for a 
word of advice ; they may have forgotten the circumstance, but 
/have not, for from them I received a brief and businesslike, 
but civil and sensible reply, on which we acted, and at last 
made way." 

The publishers to whom she finally made a successful appli- 
cation for the production of ''Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell's 
poems," were Messrs. Aylott and Jones, Paternoster Row. Mr. 
Aylott has kindly placed the letters which she wrote to them 
on the subject at my disposal. The first is dated January 28, 
1846, and in it she inquires if they will publish one volume 
octavo of poems : if not at their own risk, on the author's ac- 
count. It is signed " C. Bronte." They must have replied 
pretty speedily, for, on January 31, she writes again : 

^* Gentlemen : Since you agree to undertake the publication 
of the work respecting which I applied to you, I should wish 
now to know, as soon as possible, the cost of paper and printing. 
I will then send the necessary remittance, together with the 
manuscript. I should like it to be printed in one octavo volume, 
of the same quality of paper and size of type as Moxon's last 
edition of Wordsworth. The poems will occupy, I should 
think, from 200 to 250 pages. They are not the production of 
a clergyman, nor are they exclusively of a religious character ; 
but I presume the-se circumstances will be immaterial. It will, 
perhaps, be necessary that you should see the manuscript, in 
order to calculate accurately the expense of publication ; in 
that case I will send it immediately. I should like, however, 
previously, to have some idea of the probable cost ; and if, 
from what I have said, you can make a rough calculation on the 
subject, I should be greatly obliged to you." 

In her next letter, February 6, she says : 



56 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

^' You will perceive that the poems are the work of three 
persons, relatives ; their separate pieces are distinguished by 
their respective signatures." 

She writes again on February 15 ; and on the i6th she 
says : 

*' The MS. will certainly form a thinner volume than I had 
anticipated. I cannot name another model which I should 
like it precisely to resemble, yet I think a duodecimo form, 
and a somewhat reduced, though still clear type, would be 
preferable. I only stipulate for clear type, not too small ; and 
good paper." 

On February 21 she selects the ^Mong primer type" for the 
poems, and will remit ;£^i los, in a few days. 

Minute as the details conveyed in these notes are, they are 
not trivial, because they afford such strong indications of 
character. If the volume w^as to be published at their own risk, 
it was necessary that the sister conducting the negotiation 
should make herself acquainted with the different kinds of 
type, and the various sizes of books. Accordingly she bought 
a small volume, from which to learn all she could on the sub- 
ject of preparation for the press. No half-knowledge — no 
trusting to other people for decisions which she could make 
for herself ; and yet a generous and full confidence, not mis- 
placed, in the thorough probity of Messrs. Aylott and Jones. 
The caution in ascertaining the risk before embarking in the 
enterprise, and the prompt payment of the money required, 
even before it could be said to have assumed the shape of a 
debt, were both parts of a self-reliant and independent char- 
acter. Self-contained also w^as she. During the whole time 
that the volume of poems was in the course of preparation and 
publication, no word was written telling any one, out of the 
household circle, what was in progress. 

During the time that the negotiation with Messrs. Aylott & 
Co. w^as going on, Charlotte went to visit her old school friend 
with whom she was in such habits of confidential intimacy ; 
but neither then nor afterward did she ever speak to her of 
the publication of the poems ; nevertheless, this young lady 
suspected that the sisters wrote for magazines ; and in this 
idea she was confirmed when, on one of her visits to Haworth, 
she saw Anne with a number of Chambers's JournaL and a gentle 
smile of pleasure stealing over her placid face as she read. 

''What is the matter?" asked the friend. ''Why do you 
smile ? " 

" Only because I see they have inserted one of my poems," w^as 
the quiet reply ; and not a word more was said on the subject. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 57 

To this friend Charlotte addressed the following letters : 

'' March 3, 1846. 
" I reached home a little after two o'clock, all safe and 
right yesterday ; I found papa very well ; his sight much the 
same. Emily and Anne were going to Keighley to meet me ; 
unfortunately, I had returned by the old road, while they w^ere 
gone by the new, and we missed each other. They did not 
get home till half-past four, and were caught in the heavy 
shower of rain which fell in the afternoon. I am sorry to say 
Anne has taken a little cold in consequence, but I hope she will 
soon be well. Papa was much cheered by my report of Mr. 
C.'s opinion, and of old Mrs E.'s experience ; but I could per- 
ceive he caught gladly at the idea of deferring the operation a 
few months longer. I went into the room where Branwell was, 
to speak to him, about an hour after I got home ; it was very 
forced work to address him. I might have spared myself the 
trouble, as he took no notice, and made no reply ; he was stu- 
pefied. My fears were not vain. I hear that he got a sovereign 
while I have been away, under pretense of paying a pressing 
debt ; he went immediately and changed it at a public-house, 

and has employed ii as was to be expected. concluded her 

account by saying he was a ^ hopeless being '; it is too true. In 
his present state it is scarcely possible to stay in the room where 
he is. What the future has in store I do not know." 

Meanwhile the printing of the volume of poems was quietly 
proceeding. After some consultation and deliberation the sis- 
ters had determined to correct the proofs themselves. Up to 
March 28 the publishers had addressed their correspondent 
as C. Bronte, Esq.; but at this time some ^'little mistake oc- 
curred," and she desired Messrs. Aylott & Co. in future to di- 
rect to her real address, ''Miss Bronte," etc. She had, how- 
ever, evidently left it to be implied that she was not acting on 
her own behalf, but as agent for the real authors, since, in a 
note dated April 6, she makes a proposal on behalf of *' C, 
E., and A. Bell," which is to the following effect : that they are 
preparing for the press a work of fiction, consisting of three 
distinct and unconnected tales, which may be published either 
together, as a work of three volumes, of the ordinary novel 
size, or separately, as single volumes, as may be deemed most 
advisable. She states, in addition, that it is not their intention 
to publish these tales on their own account ; but that the au- 
thors direct her to ask Messrs. Aylott & Co. whether they 
would be disposed to undertake the work, after having, of 



58 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

course, by due inspection of the MS., ascertained that its con- 
tents are such as to warrant an expectation of success. To this 
letter of inquiry the publishers replied speedily, and the 
tenor of their answer may be gathered from Charlotte's, dated 
April II. 

^^ I beg to thank you, in the name of C, E., and A. Bell, for 
}^our obliging offer of advice. I will avail myself of it to re- 
quest information on two or three points. It is evident that 
unknown authors have great difficulties to contend with before 
they can succeed in bringing their works before the public. Can 
you give me any hint as to the way in which these difficulties 
are best met ? For instance, in the present case, where a work 
of fiction is in question, in what form would a publisher be most 
likely to accept the MS.? Whether offered as a work of three 
volumes, or as tales which might be published in numbers, or 
as contributions to a periodical? 

*^ What publishers would be most likely to receive favorably 
a proposal of this nature ? 

** Would it suffice to write to a publisher on the subject, or 
would it be necessary to have recourse to a personal inter- 
view ? 

*' Your opinion and advice on these three points, or on any 
other which your experience may suggest as important, would 
be esteemed by us as a favor." 

It is evident from the whole tenor of this correspondence, 
that the truthfulness and probity of the firm of publishers with 
whom she had to deal in this her first literary venture, were 
strongly impressed upon her mind, and were followed by the 
inevitable consequence of reliance on tlieir suggestions. And 
the progress of the poems was not unreasonably lengthy or 
long drawn out. On April 20 she writes to desire that three 
copies may be sent to her, and that Messrs. Aylott will advise 
her as to the reviewers to whom copies ought to be sent. 

I give the next letter as illustrating the ideas of these girls 
as to what periodical reviews or notices led public opinion : 

^* The poems to be neatly done up in cloth. Have the good- 
ness to send copies and advertisements, as early as possible^ to 
each of the undermentioned periodicals : 

** Colbunis New Monthly Magazine, 

'* Bentleys Magazine. 

" Hood's Magazine. 

^* J err old's Shilling Magazine, 

** Blackiiwod" s Magazine. 
The Edinburgh Review, 

" Taifs Edinburgh Alagazine, 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 59 

" The Dublin U?iiversity Magazine. 

" Also to the Daily News and to the B7'itannia newspapers. 

"If there are any other periodicals to which you have been 
in the habit of sending copies of works, let them be supplied 
also with copies. I think those I have mentioned will suffice 
for advertising." 

In compliance with this latter request, Messrs. Aylott sug- 
gest that copies and advertisements of the work should be sent 
to \\\Q At he nceiwi. Literary Gazette, Critic, and Times; but in 
her reply Miss Bronte says that she thinks the periodicals she 
first mentioned will be sufficient for advertising in at present, 
as the authors do not wish to lay out a larger sum than two 
pounds in advertising, esteeming the success of a work depen- 
dent more on the notice it receives from periodicals than on 
the quantity of advertisements. In case of any notice of the 
poems appearing, w^hether favorable or otherwise, Messrs. Ay- 
lott & Co. are requested to send her the name and number 
of those periodicals in which such notices appear ; as other- 
wise, since she has not the opportunity of seeing periodicals 
regularly, she may miss reading the critique. *' Should the 
poems be remarked upon favorably, it is my intention to appro- 
priate a further sum for* advertisements. If, on the other 
hand, they should pass unnoticed or be condemned, I consider 
it would be quite useless to advertise, as there is nothing either 
in the title of the work, or the names of the authors, to attract 
attention from a single individual." 

I suppose the little volume of poems was published some 
time about the end of May, 1846. It stole into life ; some 
weeks passed over without the mighty murmuring public dis- 
covering that three more voices were uttering their speech. 
And, meanwhile, the course of existence moved drearily along 
from day to day with the anxious sisters, who must have for- 
gotten their sense of authorship in the vital care gnawing at 
their hearts. On June 17, Charlotte writes : 

" Branwell declares that he neither can nor will do anything 
for himself ; good situations have been offered him, for which, 
by a fortnight's work, he might have qualified himself, but he 
will do nothing except drink and make us all wretched." 

In the Atheticeum of July 4, under the head of j)oetry for 
the million, came a short review of the poems of C, E., and A. 
Bell. The reviewer assigns to Ellis the highest rank of the 
three " brothers," as he supposes them to be ; he calls Ellis 
"a fine, quaint spirit"; and speaks of "an evident power of 
wing that may reach heights not here attempted." Again, 
with some degree of penetration, the reviewer says that the 



6o LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

poems of Ellis ^^ convey an impression of originality beyond 
what his contributions to these volumes embody." Currer is 
placed midway between Ellis and Acton. But there is little in 
the review to strain out, at this distance of time, as worth pre- 
serving. Still, we can fancy with what interest it w^as read at 
Haworth Parsonage, and how the sisters w^ould endeavor to 
find out reasons for opinions, or hints for the future guidance 
of their talents. 

A letter of Charlotte's, dated July lo, 1846, is only interesting 
to the reader as it conveys a peremptory disclaimer of the report 
that the writer was engaged to be married to her father's 
curate — the very same gentleman to whom, eight years after- 
ward, she was united ; and who, probably, even now, although 
she was unconscious of the fact, had begun his service to her, 
in the same tender and faithful spirit as that in which Jacob 
served for Rachel. Others may have noticed this, though she 
did not. 

A few more notes remain of her correspondence, ** on behalf 
of the Messrs. Bell," with Mr. Aylott. On July 15 she says : 
*' I suppose, as you have not written, no other notices have yet 
appeared, nor has the demand for the work increased. Will 
you favor me with a line stating whether any^ or how many, 
copies have yet been sold?" 

But few, I fear, for three days later she wrote the follow- 
ing : 

'' The Messrs. Bell desire me to thank you for your sugges- 
tion respecting the advertisements. They agree with you that, 
since the season is unfavorable, advertising had better be de- 
ferred. They are obliged to you for the information respect- 
ing the number of copies sold." 

On July 23 she writes to the Messrs. Aylott : 

" The Messrs. Bell would be obliged to you to post the in- 
closed note in London. It is an answer to the letter you for- 
warded, which contained an application for their autographs 
from a person who professed to have read and admired their 
poems. I think I before intimated that the Messrs. Bell are 
desirous for the present of remaining unknown, for w^hich 
reason they prefer having the note posted in London to send- 
ing it direct, in order to avoid giving any clew to residence, or 
identity, by postmark, etc." 

Once more, in September, she writes : *' As the work has 
received no further notice from any periodical, I presume the 
demand for it has not greatly increased." 

In the biographical notice of lier sisters, she tluis speaks of 
the failure of the modest hopes vested in this publication. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 



" The book was printed ; it is scarcely known, and all of it 
that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. The 
fixed conviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these poems, 
has not, indeed, received the confirmation of much favorable 
criticism ; but I must retain it notwithstanding." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

During this summer of 1846, while her literary hopes were 
waning, an -anxiety of another kind was increasing. Her fa- 
•ther's eyesight had become seriously impaired by the progress 
of the cataract which was forming. He was nearly blind. 
He could grope his way about, and recognize the figures of 
those he knew well, when they were placed against a strong 
light ; but he could no longer see to read ; and thus his eager 
appetite for knowledge and information of all kinds was se- 
verely balked. 

Under his great sorrow^ he was always patient. As in times 
of far greater affliction, he enforced a quiet endurance of his 
woe upon himself. But so many interests were quenched by 
this blindness that he was driven inward, and must have 
dwelt much on what was painful and distressing in regard to 
his only son. No wonder that his spirits gave way, and were 
depressed. For some time before this autumn, his daughters 
had been collectmg all the information they could respecting 
the probable success of operations for cataract performed on 
a person of their father's age. About the end of July, Emily 
and Charlotte had made a journey to Manchester for the pur- 
pose of searching out an operator ; and there they heard of 
the fame of the late Mr. Wilson as an oculist. They went to 
him at once, but he could not tell, from description, whether 
the eyes were ready for being operated upon or not. It there- 
fore became necessary for Mr. BrQnte to visit him ; and to- 
ward the end of August, Charlotte brought her father to him. 
He determined at once to undertake the operation, and recom- 
mended them to comfortable lodgings kept by an old servant of 
his. These were in one of numerous similar streets of small 
monotonous-looking houses, in a suburb of the town. From 
thence the letter is dated, on August 26, 1846, which contains 
the following extract : 

" The operation is over ; it took place yesterday. Mr. 
Wilson performed it ; two other surgeons assisted. Mr. Wilson 
says he considers it quite successful. ..." 

All this time, notwithstanding tlie domestic anxieties which 



02 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

were harassing them — notwithstanding the ill success of their 
poems — the three sisters were trying that other literary venture, 
to which Charlotte made allusion in one of her letters to the 
. Messrs. Aylott. Each of them had written a prose tale, hop- 
ing that the three might be published together. " Wuthering 
Heights" and *' Agnes Grey" are before the world. The 
third — Charlotte's contribution — is yet in manuscript, but will 
be published shortly after the appearance of this memoir. The 
plot in itself is of no great interest ; but it is a poor kind of 
interest that depends upon startling incidents rather than 
upon dramatic development of character ; and Charlotte Bronte 
never excelled one or two sketches of portraits which she has 
given in ^* The Professor" ; nor, in grace of womanhood, ever 
surpassed one of the female characters there described. By 
the time she wrote this tale, her taste and judgment had re- 
volted against the exaggerated idealisms of her early girlhood, 
and she went to the extreme of reality, closely depicting char- 
acters as they had shown themselves to her in actual life ; if 
there they were strong even to coarseness, — as was the case 
with some that she had met with in flesh and blood existence, — 
she '' wrote them down an ass " ; if the scenery of such life as 
she saw was for the most part wild and grotesque, instead of 
pleasant or picturesque, she described it line for line. The 
grace of the one or two scenes and characters, which are drawn 
rather from her own imagination than from absolute fact, 
stand out in exquisite relief from the deep shadows and way- 
ward lines of others, which call to mind some of the portraits 
of Rembrandt. 

The three tales had tried their fate in vain together ; at 
length they were sent forth separately, and for many months 
with still continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, 
because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with 
her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her 
tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some pub- 
lisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his 
operation. But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, 
and failure upon failure daunted her no more than him. Not 
only did ''The Professor " return again to try his chance 
among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of 
care and depressing inquietude, — in those gray, weary, uni- 
form streets, where all faces, save that of her kind doctor, 
were strange and untouched with sunlight to her, — there and 
then did the brave genius begin '' Jane Eyre." Read what 
slu! herself says: ''Currcr Bell's book found acceptance no- 
where, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so that something like 



LIFE OF CHARr.OTTK F.RONTK. 6;^ 

the chill of despair began to invade his heart." And, remem- 
ber, it was not the heart of a person who, disappointed in one 
hope, can turn with redoubled affection to the many certain 
blessings that remain. 'Jliink of her home, and the black 
shadow of remorse lying over one in it, till his very brain was 
mazed, and his gifts and his life were lost ; think of her 
father's sight hanging on a thread ; of her sisters' delicate- 
health and dependence on her care; and then admire as it 
deserves to be admired, the steady courage which could work 
away at *' Jane Eyre," all the time ^^ that the one volume tale 
was plodding its weary round in London." 

Some of her surviving friends consider that an incident 

which she heard, when at school at Miss W 's, was the germ 

of the story of " Jane Eyre." But of this nothing can be 
known, except by conjecture. Those to whom she spoke 
upon the subject of her writings are dead and silent ; and the 
reader may probably have noticed that, in the correspondence 
from which I have quoted, there has been no allusion what- 
ever to the publication of her poems, nor is there the least 
hint of the intention of the sisters to publish any tales. I re- 
member, however, many little particulars which Miss Bronte 
gave me in answer to my inquiries respecting her mode of 
composition, etc. She said that it was not every day that she 
could write. Sometimes weeks or even months elapsed before 
she felt that she had anything to add to that portion of her 
story which was already written. Then, some morning she 
would wake up, and the progress of her tale lay clear and bright 
before her, in distinct vision. When this was the case, all her 
care was to discharge her household and filial duties, so as to 
obtain leisure to sit down and write out the incidents and con- 
sequent thoughts, which were, in fact, more present to her 
mind at such times than her actual life itself. Yet notwith- 
standing this '^possession" (as it were), those who survive, of 
her daily and household companions, are clear in their testi- 
mony that never was the claim of any duty, never was the call 
of another for help, neglected for an instant. It had become 
necessary to give Tabby — now nearly eighty years of age — 
the assistance of a girl. 

Any one who has studied her writings, — whether in print or 
in her letters, — any one who has enjoyed the rare privilege of 
listening to her talk, must have noticed her singular felicity in 
the choice of words. She herself, in writing her books, was 
solicitous on this point. One set of words was the truth- 
ful mirror of her thoughts ; no others, however apparently 
identical in meaning, would do. She had that strong practical 



64 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTfi. 

regard for the simple holy truth of expression, which Mr. 
Trench has enforced, as a duty too often neglected. She 
would wait patiently, searching for the right term, until it pre- 
sented itself to her. It might be provincial, it might be de- 
rived from the Latin ; so that it accurately represented her idea, 
she did not mind whence it came ; but this care makes her 
style present the finish of a piece of mosaic. Each component 
part, however small, has been dropped into the right place. 
She never wrote down a sentence until she clearly understood 
what she wanted to say, had deliberately chosen the words, 
and arranged them in their right order. Hence it comes that, 
in the scraps of paper covered with her pencil writing which I 
have seen, there will occasionally be a sentence scored out, but 
seldom, if ever, a word or an expression. She wrote on these 
bits of paper in a minute hand, holding each against a piece 
of board, such as is used in binding books, for a desk. This 
plan was necessary for one so short-sighted as she was ; and, 
besides, it enabled her to use pencil and paper, as she sat near 
the fire in the twilight hours, or if (as was too often the case) 
she was wakeful for hours in the night. Her finished manu- 
scripts were copied from these pencil scraps, in clear, legible, 
delicately traced writing, almost as easy to read as print. 

The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in their 
aunt's lifetime, of putting away their work at nine o'clock, 
and commencing their study, pacing up and down the sitting- 
room. At this time, they talked over the stories they were 
engaged upon, and described their plots. Once or twice a 
week, each read to the others what she had written, and heard 
what they had to say about it. Charlotte told me that the 
remarks made had seldom any effect in inducing her to alter 
her work, so possessed was she with the feeling that she had 
described reality ; but the readings were of great and stirring 
interest to all, taking them out of the gnawing pressure of 
daily recurring cares, and setting them in a free place. It 
was on one of these occasions that Charlotte determined to 
make her heroine plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of 
the accepted canon. 

The writer of the beautiful obituary article on ''the death 
of Currer Bell," most likely learnt from herself what is there 
stated, and which I will take the liberty of quoting, about 
*'Jane Eyre." 

" She once told her sisters that they were wrong — even 
morally wrong — in making their heroines beautiful as a matter 
of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a 
heroine interesting on any other terms. Her answer was^ ' I 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 65 

will prove to you that you are wrong ; I will show you a hero- 
ine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting 
as any of yours.' Hence ^ Jane Eyre,' said she in telling the 
anecdote : ^ but she is not myself, any further than that.' As 
the work went on, the interest deepened to the writer. When 
she came to ^ Thornfield' she could not stop. Being short- 
sighted to excess, she wrote in little square paper books, held 
close to her eyes, and (the first copy) in pencil. On she went, 
writing incessantly for three weeks ; by which time she had 
carried her heroine away from Thornfield, and was herself in 
a fever which compelled her to pause." 

They arrived at home about the end of September. Mr. 
Bronte was daily gaining strength, but he was still forbidden 
to exercise his sight much. Things had gone on more com- 
fortably while she was away than Charlotte had dared to hope, 
and she expresses herself thankful for the good insured and 
the evil spared during her absence. 

Soon after this some proposal, of which I have not been able 
to gain a clear account, was again mooted for Miss Bronte's 
opening a school at some place distant from Haworth. But 
she would not leave home. 

The year 1847 opened with a spell of cold dreary weather, 
which told severely on a constitution already tried by anxiety 
and care. Miss Bronte describes herself as having utterly lost 
her appetite, and as looking *^ gray, old, worn, and sunk," from 
her sufferings during the inclement season. The cold brought 
on severe toothache ; toothache was the cause of a succession of 
restless miserable nights ; and long wakefulness told acutely 
upon her nerves, making them feel with redoubled sensitiveness 
all the harass of her oppressive life. Yet she would not allow 
herself to lay her bad health to the charge of an uneasy mind ; 
" for after all," said she at this time, " I have many, many things 
to be thankful for." 

The quiet, sad year stole on. The sisters were contemplating 
near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents 
misused and faculties abused in the person of that brother, once 
their fond darling and dearest pride. They had to cheer the 
poor old father, into whose heart all trials sank the deeper, 
because of the silent stoicism of his endurance. They had to 
watch over his health, of which, whatever was its state, he 
seldom complained. They had to save, as much as they could, 
the precious remnants of his sight. They had to order the 
frugal household with increased care, so as to supply wants 
and expenditure utterly foreign to their self-denying natures. 
Though they shrank from overmuch contact with their fellow- 



66 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

beings, for all whom they met they had kind words, if few ; and 
when kind actions were needed, they were not spared, if the 
sisters at the parsonage could render them. They visited the 
parish-schools duly ; and often were Charlotte's rare and brief 
hoUdays of a visit from home shortened by her sense of the 
necessity of being in her place at the Sunday-school. 

In the intervals of such a life as this, "Jane Eyre" was 
making progress. *^ The Professor " was passing slowly and 
heavily from publisher to publisher. " Wuthering Heights " 
and " Agnes Grey " had been accepted by another publisher, 
"on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors"; a 
bargain to be alluded to more fully hereafter. It was lying 
in his hands, awaiting his pleasure for its passage through the 
press, during all the months of early summer. 

The piece of external brightness to which the sisters looked, 
during these same summer months, was the hope that the friend 
to whom so many of Charlotte's letters are addressed, and who 
was her chosen companion, whenever circumstances permitted 
them to be together, as well as a favorite with Emily and Anne, 
would be able to pay them a visit at Haworth. Fine weather 
had come in May, Charlotte writes, and they hoped to make 
their visitor decently comfortable. Their brother was toler- 
ably well, having got to the end of a considerable sum of money 
which he became possessed of in the spring, and therefore 
under the wholesome restriction of poverty. But Charlotte 
warns her friend that she must expect to find a change in his 
api^earance, and tiiat he is broken in mind ; and ends her note 
of entreating invitation by saying, " I pray for fine weather, that 
we may get out while you stay." At length the day was fixed. 

" Friday will suit us very well. I (/(^ trust nothing will now arise 
to prevent your coming. I shall be anxious about the weather 
on that day ; if it rains, I shall cry. Don't expect me to meet 
you ; where would be the good of it ? I neither like to meet, 
nor to be met. Unless indeed, you had a box or a basket for 
me to carry : then there would be some sense in it. Come in 
black, blue, })ink, white, or scarlet, as you like. Come shabby 
or smart ; neither the coh^'not the condition signifies ; provided 
only the dress contain E., all will be right." 
* ]^ut there came the first of a series of disappointments to be 
borne. One feels how sharp it must have been to have wrung 
out the following words. 

" Mav 20. 

"Your letter of yesterday did indeed give me a cruel chill of 
disappointmen.t. I cannot blame you, for I kn.ow it was not 
your fault. I do not altogether exempt from .rejM-oach. 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 67 

This is bitter, but I feel bitter. As to going to B , 1 will 

not go near the place till you have been to Haworth. My re- 
spects to all and sundry, accompanied with a large amount of 
wormwood and gall, from the effusion of which you and your 
mother are alone excepted. C. B. 

" You are quite at liberty to tell what I think, if you judge 
proper. Though it is true I may be somewhat unjust, for I 
am deeply annoyed. I thought I had arranged your visit 
tolerably comfortable for you this time. I may find it more 
difficult on another occasion." 

I must give one sentence from a letter written about this 
time, as it shows distinctly the clear strong sense of the writer : 

^' I was amused by what she says resided ing her wish that, 
when she marries, her husband will, at least, have a will of his 
own, even should he be a tyrant. Tell lier, when she forms 
that aspiration again, she must make it conditional ; if her 
husband has a strong will he must also have strong sense, a 
kind heart, and a thoroughly correct notion of justice ; because 
a man wnth a weak brain and a strong will is merely an intract- 
able brute ; you can have no hold of him ; you can never lead 
him right. A tyrant under any circumstances is a curse." 

Meanwhile, ''The Professor" had met with many refusals 
from different publishers ; some, I have reason to believe, not 
overcourteously worded in writing to an unknown author, and 
none alleging any distinct reasons for its rejection. Courtesy 
is always due ; but it is, perhaps, hardly to be expected that, 
in the press of business in a great publishing house, they should 
find time to explain why they decline particular works. Yet 
though one course of action is not to be wondered at, the oj^po- 
site may fall upon a grieved and disappointed mind with all 
the graciousness of dew ; and I can well sympathize with the 
published accounts which ''Currer Bell " gives of the fcelmgs 
experienced on reading Messrs. Smith and Elder's letter con- 
taining the rejection of ''The Professor." 

" As a forlorn hope, we tried one publishing house more. 
Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which cxjUMi- 
ence had taught him to calculate, there came a letter, uliich lie 
opened in the dreary anticipation of finding two hard, hopeless 
lines, intimating that ' Messrs. Smith and Elder were not dis- 
posed to publish the MS.,' and, instead, he took out of the 
envelope a letter of two pages. He read it trembling. It de- 
clined, indeed, to publish that tale for business reasons, but it 
discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, s(» (on-idcr- 
ately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlight- 



68 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

ened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than a 
vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was 
added that a work in three volumes would meet with careful 
attention." 

The following was Miss Bronte's reply to the letter men- 
tioned above : 

" Your objection to the want of varied interest in the tale is, 
I am aware, not without grounds ; yet it appears to me that it 
might be published without serious risk, if its appearance 
were speedily followed up by another work from the same pen, 
of a more striking and exciting character. The first work 
might serve as an introduction, and accustom the public to the 
author's name ; the success of the second might thereby be 
rendered more probable. I have a second narrative in three 
volumes, now in progress, and nearly completed, to which I 
have endeavored to impart a more vivid interest than belongs 
to ^ The Professor.' In about a month I hope to finish it, so 
that, if a publisher were found for ^ The Professor,' the second 
narrative might follow as soon as deemed advisable ; and thus 
the interest of the public (if any interest was aroused) might 
not be suffered to cool. Will you be kind enough to favor me 
with your judgment on this plan ? " 

While the minds of the three sisters were in this state of 
suspense, their long expected friend came to pay her promised 
visit. Throughout the visit not a word was uttered to their 
friend of the three tales in London ; two accepted and in the 
press — one trembling in the balance of a publisher's judgment ; 
nor did she hear of that other story ^' nearly completed," lying 
in manuscript in the gray old parsonage down below. She 
might have her suspicions that they all wrote with an intention 
of publication some time; but she knew the bounds which 
they set to themselves in their communications ; nor could 
she, nor can any one else, wonder at their reticence, when re- 
membering how scheme after scheme had failed, just as it 
seemed close upon accomplishment. 

Mr. Bronte, too, had his suspicions of something going on ; 
but, never being spoken to, he did not speak on the subject, and 
consequently his ideas were vague and uncertain, only just 
prophetic enough to keep him from being actually stunned 
when, later on, he heard of the success of ^' Jane Eyre " ; to 
the progress of which we must now return. 

to messrs. smith and elder. 

** August 24. 
" I now send you per rail a MS. entitled * Jane Eyre,' a novel 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 69 

in three volumes, by Currer pjell. I find I ciinnot prepay the 
carriage of the parcel, as money for that purpose is not received 
at the small station-house where it is left. If, when you ac- 
knowledge the receipt of the MS., you would have the goodness 
to mention the amount charged on delivery, I will immediately 
transmit it in postage stamps. It is better in future to address 
Mr. Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Bronte, Haworth, Bradford, 
Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not 
reaching me at present. To save trouble, I inclose an en- 
velope." 

** Jane Eyre " was accepted, and printed and published by 
October i6th. 

While it was in the press. Miss Bronte went to pay a short visit 

to her friend at B . The proofs were forwarded to her there, 

and she occasionally sat at the same table with her friend, cor- 
recting them ; but they did not exchange a word on the subject. 

When the manuscript of ^' Jane Eyre" had been received by 
the future publishers of that remarkable novel, it fell to the 
share of a gentleman connected with the firm to read it first. 
He was so powerfully struck by the character of the tale that 
he reported his impression in very strong terms to Mr. Smith, 
who appears to have been much amused by the admiration ex- 
cited. ^'You seem to have been so enchanted that I do not 
know how to believe you," he laughingly said. But when a 
second reader, in the person of a clear-headed Scotchman, not 
given to enthusiasm, had taken the MS. home in the evening, 
and became so deeply interested in it as to sit up half the night 
to finish it, Mr. Smith's curiosity was sufficiently excited to 
prompt him to read it for himself ; and great as were the praises 
which had been bestowed upon it, he found that they had not 
exceeded the truth. 

On its publication, copies were presented to a few private 
literary friends. Their discernment had been rightly reckoned 
upon. They were of considerable standing in the world of 
letters ; and one and all returned expressions of high praise 
along with their thanks for the book. Among them was the 
great writer of fiction for whom Miss Bronte felt so strong an 
admiration ; he immediately appreciated, and, in a characteris- 
tic note to the publishers, acknowledged its extraordinary 
merits. 

The reviews were more tardy, or more cautious. The 
AthencEum and the Spectator gave short notices, contain- 
ing qualified admissions of the power of the author. The 
Literary Gazette was uncertain as to whether it was safe to 



70 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

praise an unknown author. The Daily News declined ac- 
cepting the copy which had been sent on .the score of a rule 
*' never to review novels" ; but a little later on, there appeared 
a notice of the '^ Bachelor of the Albany," in that paper ; 
and Messrs. Smith and Elder again forw^arded a copy of *' Jane 
Eyre" to the editor, with a request for a notice. This time 
the work was accepted ; but I am not aware what was the char- 
acter of the article upon it. 

The Examiner came forward to the rescue, as far as the 
opinions of professional critics were concerned. The literary 
articles in that paper were always remarkable for their genial 
and generous appreciation of merit ; nor was the ^lotice of 
*^ Jane Eyre" an exception ; it was full of hearty, yet delicate and 
discriminating praise. Otherwise, the press in general did lit- 
tle to promote the sale of the novel ; the demand for it among 
librarians had begun before the appearance of the review 
in the Examinei' ; the power and fascination of the tale it- 
self made its merits known to the public, without the kindly 
finger-posts of professional criticism ; and early in December 
the rush began for copies. 

The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures 
from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and 
disappointment by witnessing his ; for he took an acute inter- 
est in all that befell his' children, and his own tendency had 
been toward literature ui the days when he was young and hope- 
ful. 

Now, however, when the demand for the work had assured 
success to " Jane Eyre," her sisters urged Charlotte to tell 
their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his 
study one afternoon after his early dinner, carrying with her 
a copy of the book, and twp or three reviews, taking care to in- 
clude a notice adverse to it. 

She informed me that something like the following conver- 
sation took place between her and him. (I wrote down her 
words the day after I heard them ; and I am pretty sure they 
are quite accurate.) 

** Papa, I've been writing a book." 

" Have you, my dear ? " 

" Yes, and I want you to read it." 

^^I'm afraid it will try my eyes too much." 

^* But, it is not manuscript ; it is printed." 

** My dear ! you've never thought of the expense it will be ! 
It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book 
sold ? No one knows you or your name." 

" But papa, I don't think it will be a loss ; no more will you, 



LIFE OF CHART.O'l'TF 15RONTE. 7 1 

if you will just let me read you a review or two and tell you 
more about it." 

So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father ; 
and then giving him the copy of '' Jane l^^yre" that she intended 
for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea, he 
said, '' Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, 
and it is much better than likely ? " 

But, while the existence of Currer Bell, the author, was like 
a piece of a dream to the quiet inhabitants of Haworth Par- 
sonage, who went on with their uniform household life, their 
cares for their brother being its only variety, the whole read- 
ing-world of England was in a ferment to discover the un- 
known author. Even the publishers of " Jane Eyre " were 
ignorant whether Currer Bell was a real or an assumed name — 
whether it belonged to a man or a woman. In every town peo- 
ple sought out the list of their friends and acquaintances, and 
turned away in disappointment. No one they knew had genius 
enough to be the author. Every little incident mentioned in 
the book was turned this way and that to answer, if possible, the 
much-vexed question of sex. All in vain. People were con- 
tent to relax their exertions to satisfy their curiosity, and simply 
to sit down and greatly admire. 

When the second edition appeared, in the January of the 
following year, with the dedication to Mr. Thackeray, people 
looked at each other and wondered afresh. But Currer Bell 
knew no more of William Makepeace Thackeray as an individ- 
ual man — of his life, age, fortunes, or circumstances — than she 
did of those of Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh. The one had 
placed his name as author upon the title-page of ** Vanity 
Fair," the other had not. She was thankful for the opportu- 
nity of expressing her high admiration of a writer, whom, 
as she says, she regarded ^' as the social regenerator of his 
day." 

Anne Bronte had been more than usually delicate all the 
summer, and her sensitive spirit had been deeply affected by the 
great anxiety of her home. But now that " Jane Eyre" gave 
such indications of success, Charlotte began to plan schemes 
of future pleasure — perhaps relaxation from care, would be 
the more correct expression — for their darling younger sister, 
the '' little one " of the household. But, although Anne was 
cheered for a time by Charlotte's success, the fact was, that 
neither her spirits nor her bodily strength were such as to in- 
cline her to much active exertion, and she led far too seden- 
tary a life, continually stooping either over her book, or work, 
or at her desk. 



72 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 



CHAPTER IX. 



In December, 1847, '* AVuthering Heights" and ** Agnes 
Grey " appeared. 

Whether justly or unjustly, the productions of the two 
younger Misses Bronte were not received with much favor at 
the time of their publication. " Critics failed to do them 
justice. The immature, but very real, powers revealed in 
* Wuthering Heights,' were scarcely recognized; its import and 
nature were misunderstood; the identity of its author was mis- 
represented ; it was said that this was an earlier and ruder 
attempt of the same pen which had produced *Jane Eyre.' 
.... Unjust and grievous error! We laughed at it at first, 
but I deeply lament it now." 

Henceforward Charlotte Bronte's existence becomes divided 
into two parallel currents — her life as Currer Bell, the author ; 
her life as Charlotte Bronte, the woman. There were sepa- 
rate duties belonging to each character — not opposing each 
other ; not impossible, but difficult to be reconciled. When a 
man becomes an author, it is probably merely a change of em- 
ployment to him. He takes a portion of that time which has 
hitherto been devoted to some other study or pursuit ; he 
gives up something of the legal or medical profession, in 
which he has hitherto endeavored to serve others, or relin- 
quishes part of the trade or business by which he has been 
striving to gain a livelihood ; and another merchant, or law- 
yer, or doctor, steps into his vacant place, and probably does 
as well as he. But no other can take up the quiet regular 
duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother, as well as she 
whom God has appointed to fill that particular place; a 
woman's principal work in life is hardly left to her own 
choice ; nor can she drop the domestic charges, devolving on 
her as an individual, for the exercise of the most splendid 
talents that were ever bestowed. And yet she must not shrink 
from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her 
possessing such talents. She must pot hide her gift in a 
napkin ; it was meant for the use and service of others. In a 
humble and faithful spirit must she labor to do what is not 
impossible, or God would not have set her to do it. 

I put into words what Charlotte Bronte put into actions. 

The year 1848 opened with sad domestic distress. It is 
necessary, however painful, to remind the reader constantly of 
what was always present to the hearts of father and sisters at 
this time. It is well that the thoughtless critics, who spoke of 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 73 

the sad and gloomy views of life presented by the Brontes in 
their tales, should know how such words were wrung out of 
them by the living recollection of the long agony they suf- 
fered. It is well, too, that they who have objected to the rep- 
resentation of coarseness and shrank from it with repug- 
nance, as if such conceptions arose out of- the writers, should 
learn that, not from the imagination — not from internal con- 
ception — but from the hard cruel facts, pressed down by ex- 
ternal life, upon their very senses, for long months and years 
together, did they write out what they saw, obeying the stern 
dictates of their conscience. They might be mistaken. They 
might err in writing at all, when their afflictions were so great 
that they could not write otherwise than they did of life. It 
is possible that it would have been better to have described 
only good and pleasant people, doing only good and pleasant 
things (in which case they could hardly have written at any 
time) ; all I say is, that never, I believe, did women, possessed 
of such wonderful gifts, exercise them with a fuller feeling of 
responsibility for their use. As to mistakes, they stand now — 
as authors as well as women — before the judgment-seat of God. 

The winter in Haworth had been a sickly season. Influenza 
had prevailed amongst the villagers, and where there was a real 
need for the presence of the clergyman's daughters they were 
never found wanting, although they were shy of bestowing mere 
social visits on the parishioners. They had themselves suf- 
fered from the epidemic ; Anne severely, as in her case it 
had been attended with cough and fever enough to make her 
elder sisters very anxious about her. 

The reason why Miss Bronte was so anxious to preserve the 
secret of her authorship was, I am told, that she had promised 
her sisters that it should not be revealed through her. 

The dilemmas attendant on the publication of the sisters' 
novels, under assumed names, were increasing upon them. 
Many critics insisted on believing that all the fictions published 
as by three Bells were the works of one author, but written at 
different periods of his development and maturity. No doubt 
this suspicion affected the reception of the books. Ever since 
the completion of Anne Bronte's tale of " Agnes Grey," she 
had been laboring at a second, " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." 
It is little known ; the subject — the deterioration of a charac- 
ter, whose profligacy and ruin took their rise in habits of in- 
temperance so slight as to be only considered ''good-fellow- 
ship" — was painfully discordant to one who would fain have 
sheltered herself from all but peaceful and religious ideas. 
" She had " (says her sister of that gentle '' little one"), '' in the 



74 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

course of her life, been called on to contemplate near at hand, 
and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and 
faculties abused ; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and 
dejected nature ; what she saw sunk very deeply into her mind; 
it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be 
a duty to reproduce every detail (of course, with fictitious char- 
acters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She 
hated her work but would pursue it. When reasoned with on 
the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to 
self-indulgence. She must be honest ; she must not varnish, 
soften, or conceal. This well-meant resolution brought on her 
misconstruction and some abuse, which she bore, as it was her 
custom to bear whatever was unpleasant, with mild, steady pa- 
tience. She was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the 
tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad shade to her 
brief, blameless life." 

In the June of this year, *^ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" 
was sufficiently near its completion to be submitted to the 
person w^ho had previously published for Ellis and Acton Bell. 

In consequence of his mode of doing business, considerable 
annoyance was occasioned both to Miss Bronte and to them. 
The circumstances, as detailed in a letter of hers to a friend 
in New Zealand, were these : One morning, at the beginning 
of July, a communication was received at the parsonage, from 
Messrs. Smith and Elder, which disturbed its quiet inmates 
not a little, as, though the matter brought under their notice 
was merely referred to as one which affected their literary 
reputation, they conceived it to have a bearing likewise upon 
their character. *' Jane Eyre " had had a great run in America, 
and a publisher there had consequently bid high for early 
sheets of the next work by ^^ Currer Bell." These Messrs. 
Smith and Elder had promised to let him have. He was there- 
fore greatly astonished, and not well pleased, to learn that a 
similar agreement had been entered into with another Ameri- 
can house, and that the new tale was very shortly to appear. 

It turned out, upon inquiry, that the mistake had originated 
in Acton and Ellis Bell's publisher having assured this Ameri- 
can house that, to the best of his belief , '* Jane Eyre," 'MVuth- 
ering Heights," and *' The Tenant of Wildfell Hall " (which he 
pronounced superior to either of the other two) were all writ- 
ten by the same author. 

Though Messrs. Smith and Elder distinctly stated in their 
letter that they did not share in such *' belief," the sisters were 
impatient till they had shown its utter groundlessness and set 
themselves perfectly straight. With rapid decision, they re- 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTP: BRONTE. 75 

solved that Charlotte and Anne should start for London that 
very day, hi order to prove their separate identity to Messrs. 
Smith and Elder, and demand from the credulous publisher 
his reasons for a " beUef " so directly at variance with an as- 
surance which had several times been given to him. Having 
arrived at this determination, they made their preparations 
with resolute promptness. There were many household duties 
to be performed that day ; but they were all got through. The 
two sisters each packed up a change of dress in a small box, 
which they sent down to Keighley by an opportune cart ; and, 
after early tea, they set off to walk thither — no doubt in some 
excitement ; for, independently of the cause of their going to 
London, it was Anne's first visit there. A great thunderstorm 
overtook them on their way that summer evening to the 
station; but they had no time to seek shelter. They only just 
caught the train at Keighley, arrived at Leeds, and were 
whirled up by the night train to London. 

About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning, they arrived at 
the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row — a strange place, 
but they did not well know where else to go. They refreshed 
themselves by washing, and had some breakfast. Then they 
sat still for a few minutes to consider what next should be 
done. 

When they had been discussing their project in the quiet 
of Haworth Parsonage the day before, and planning the mode 
of setting about the business on which they were going to 
London, they had resolved to take a cab, if they should find it , 
desirable, from their inn to Cornhill ; but, amidst the bustle 
and ^' queer state of inward excitement" in which they found 
themselves, as they sat and considered their position on the 
Saturday morning, they quite forgot even the possibility of 
hiring a conveyance ; and when they set forth, they became 
so .dismayed by the crowded streets and the impeded crossings 
that they stood still repeatedly, in com]:)lete despair of making 
progress, and were nearly an hour in walking the half-mile they 
had to go. Neither Mv. Smith nor Mr. Williams knew that 
they were coming; they were entirely unknown to the pub- 
lishers of ''Jane Eyre," who were not, in fact, aware whether 
the "Bells "were men or women, but had ahvays written to 
them as to men. 

On reaching Mr. Smith's, Charlotte put his own letter into 
his hands; the same letter which had excited so much dis- 
turbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours be- 
fore. "Where did you get this?" said he, as if he could not 
believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight 



76 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, 
could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity 
had been hunting so eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, 
and Mr. Smith at once began to form plans for their amusement 
and pleasure during their stay in London. He urged them to 
meet a few literary friends at his house ; and this was a strong 
temptation to Charlotte, as amongst them were one or two of the 
writers whom she particularly -wished to see ; but her resolution 
to remain unknown induced her firmly to put it aside. 

The sisters were equally persevering in declining Mr. 
Smith's invitation to stay at his house. They refused to leave 
their quarters, saying they were not prepared for a long stay. 

When they returned back to their inn, poor Charlotte paid 
for the excitement of the interview, which had wound up the 
agitation and hurry of the last twenty-four hours, by a racking 
headache and harassing sickness. Toward evening, as she 
rather expected some of the ladies of Mr. Smith's family to call, 
she prepared herself for the chance by taking a strong dose of 
sal-volatile, which aroused her a little, but still, as she says, she 
was ^^in grievous bodily case" when their visitors were an- 
nounced, in full evening costume. The sisters had not under- 
stood that it had been settled that they were to go to the opera, 
and therefore were not ready. Moreover, they had no fine, 
elegant dresses, either with them or in the world. But Miss 
Bronte resolved to raise no objections in the acceptance of kind- 
ness. So, in spite of headache and weariness, they made haste 
to dress themselves in their plain, high-made country garments. 

Charlotte says, in an account which she gives to her friend 
of this visit to London, describing the entrance of her party 
into the opera house : 

^' Fine ladies and gentlemen glanced at us, as we stood by 
the box door, which was not yet opened, with a slight, graceful 
superciliousness, quite warranted by the circumstances. Still, 
I felt pleasurably excited in spite of headache, sickness, and 
conscious clownishness : and I saw Anne was calm and gentle, 
which she always is. The performance was Rossini's ' Barber 
of Seville' — very brilliant, though I fancy there are things 
I should like better. We got home after one o'clock. We 
had never been in bed the night before ; had been in con- 
stant excitement for twenty-four hours ; you may imagine we 
were tired. The next day, Sunday, Mr. Williams came early 
to take us to church ; and in the afternoon Mr. Smith and his 
mother fetched us in a carriage, and took us to his house to 
dine. 

*' On Monday we went to the exhibition of the Royal Acad^ 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 77 

emy, the National Gallery, dined again at Mr. Smith's, and 
then went home to tea with Mr. Williams at his house. 

'' On Tuesday morning we left London, kiden with books 
Mr. Smith had given us, and got safely home. A more jaded 
wretch than I looked, it would be difficult to conceive. I was 
thin when I went, but I was meager indeed when I returned, 
my face looking gray and very old, with strange deep Hues 
plowed in it ; my eyes stared unnaturally. I was weak and 
yet restless. In a while, however, these bad effects of excite- 
ment went off, and I regained my normal condition." 

The impression Miss Bronte made upon those with whom 
she first became acquainted during this visit to London was 
of a person with clear judgment and fine sense ; and, though 
reserved, possessing unconsciously the power of drawing out 
others in conversation. She never expressed an opinion with- 
out assigning a reason for it ; she never put a question without 
a definite purpose ; and yet people felt at their ease in talking 
with her. All conversation with her was genuine and stimulat- 
ing ; and when she launched forth in praise or reprobation of 
books, or deeds, or works of art, her eloquence was indeed 
burning. She was thorough in all that she said or did ; yet 
so open and fair in dealing with a subject, or contending with 
an opponent that, instead of rousing resentment, she merely 
convinced her hearers of her earnest zeal for the truth and 
right. 

On October the 9th she thus writes : 

*'The past three weeks have been a dark interval in our 
humble home. Branwell's constitution had been failing all 
the summer ; but still neither the doctors nor himself thought 
him so near his end as he was. He was entirely confined to 
his bed but for one single day, and was in the village two days 
before his death. He died, after twenty minutes' struggle, on 
Sunday morning, September 24. He w^as perfectly conscious 
till the last agony came on. His mind had undergone the 
peculiar change which frequently precedes death, two days 
previously; the calm of better feelings filled it; a return of 
natural affection marked his last moments. He is in God's 
hands now ; and the All-Powerful is likewise the All-Merciful. 
A deep conviction that he rests at last — rests well after his 
brief, erring, suffering, feverish life — fills and quiets my mind 
now. The final separation, the spectacle of his pale corpse, 
gave me more acute, bitter pain than I could have imagined. 
Till the last hour comes, we never know how much we can 
forgive, pity, regret a near relative. All his vices were and 
are nothing now. We remember only his woes. Papa was 



jS LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

acutely distressed at first, but, on the whole, has borne the 
event well. Emily and Anne are pretty well, though Anne is 
always delicate, and Emily has a cold and cough at present. 
It was my fate to sink at the crisis, when I should have 
collected my strength. Headache and sickness came on first 
on the Sunday ; I could not regain my appetite. Then in- 
ternal pain attacked me. I became at once reduced. It was 
impossible to touch a morsel. At last, bilious fever declared 
itself ; I was confined to bed a week — a weary week. But, 
thank God ! health seems now returning. I can sit up all 
day, and take moder£ite nourishment. The doctor said at 
first I should be very slow in recovering, but I seemed to get 
on faster than he anticipated. I am truly 7/iuc/i better'' 

" October 29, 1848. 
"I think I have now nearly got over the effects of my late 
illness, and am almost restored to my normal condition of 
health. I sometimes wish that it was a little higher, but we 
ought to be content with such blessings as we have, and not 
pine after those that are out of our reach. I feel much more 
uneasy about my sister than myself just now. Emily's cold 
and cough are very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her 
chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing, 
when she has moved at all quickly. She looks very thin and 
pale. Her reserved nature occasions me great uneasiness of 
mind. It is useless to question her ; you get no answers. 
It is still more useless to recommend remedies ; they are 
never adopted. Nor can I shut my eyes to Anne's great 
delicacy of constitution. The late sad event has, I feel, made 
me more apprehensive than common." 

I go on now with her own affecting words in the biographical 
notice of her sisters. 

^' But a great change approached. Affliction came in that 
shape which to anticipate is dread ; to look back on, grief. In 
tiie very heat and burden of the day the laborers failed over 

their work. My sister Emily first declined Never in all 

her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and 
she did not linger now. She sank rajMdly. She made liaste to 

leave us Day by day, when I saw with what a front she 

met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and 
love. I have seen nothing like it ; but, indeed, 1 have never 
seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler 
than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was 
that, while full of riith for others, on herself she had no pity ; 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 79 

the spirit was inexorable to the flesh ; from the trembling hand, 
the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, the same service was ex- 
acted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and wit- 
ness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words 
can render/' 

In [fact, Emily never went out of doors after the Sunday 
succeeding Branwell's death. She made no complaint ; she 
would not endure questioning ; she rejected sympathy and 
help. Many a time did Charlotte and Anne drop their sewing, 
or cease from their writing, to listen with wrung hearts to the 
failing step, the labored breathing, the frequent pauses, with 
which their sister climbed the short staircase ; yet they dared 
not notice what they observed with pangs of suffering even 
deeper than hers. They dared not notice it in words, far less 
by the caressing assistance of a helping arm or hand. They 
sat still and silent. 

When a doctor had been sent for, and was in the very house, 
Emily refused to see him. Her sisters could only describe to 
him what symptoms they had observed ; and the medicines 
which he sent she would not take, denying that she was ill. 

"December io, 1848. 
" I hardly know what to say to you about the subject which 
now interests me the most keenly of anything in this world, 
for, in truth, I hardly know what to think myself. Hope and 
fear fluctuate daily. The pain in her side and chest is better ; 
the cough, the shortness of breath, the extreme emaciation 
continue. I have endured, however, such tortures of uncer- 
tainty on this subject that, at length, I could endure it no 
longer ; and as her repugnance to seeing a medical man con- 
tinues immutable, — as she declares, ' no poisoning doctor ' 
shall come near her, — I have written, unknown to her, to an 
eminent physician in London, giving as minute a statement 
of her case and symptoms as I could draw up, and requesting 
an opinion. I expect an answer in a day or two." 

But Emily was growing rapidly worse. I remember Miss 
Bronte's shiver at recalling the pang she felt when, after hav- 
ing searched in the little hollows and sheltered crevices of the 
moors for a lingering spray of heather — just one spray, how- 
ever withered — to take in to Emily, she saw that the flower was 
not recognized by the dim and indifferent eyes. Yet, to the 
last, Emily adhered tenaciously to her habits of independence. 
She would suffer no one to assist her. Any effort to do so 
roused the old stern spirit. One Tuesday morning, in Decem- 



8o LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

ber, she arose and dressed herself as usual, making many a 
pause, but doing everything for herself, and even endeavoring 
to take up her employment of sewing ; the servants looked on, 
and knew what the catching, rattling breath, and the glaring 
of the eye too surely foretold ; but she kept at her work ; and 
Charlotte and Anne, though full of unspeak^ible dread, had 
still the faintest spark of hope. On that morning Charlotte 
wrote thus — probably in the very presence of her dying sis- 
ter : 

*^ Tuesday. 
" I should have written to you before, if I had had one word 
of hope to say ; but I have not. She grows daily weaker. The 
physician's opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of use. 
He sent some medicine, which she would not take. Moments 
so dark as these I have never known. I pray for God's support 
to us all. Hitherto he has granted it.'* 

The morning drew on to noon. Emily was worse ; she could 
only whisper in gasps. Now, when it was too late, she said 
to Charlotte, *' If you will send for the doctor, I will see him 
now." About two o'clock she died. 

As the old, bereaved father and his two surviving children 
followed the coffin to the grave, they were joined by Keeper, 
Emily's fierce, faithful bulldog. He walked alongside of the 
mourners, and into the church, and stayed quietly there all the 
time that the burial service was being read. When he came 
home, he lay down at Emily's chamber door and howled piti- 
fully for many days. Anne Bronte drooped and sickened more 
rapidly from that time ; and so ended the year 1848. 

The progress of Anne's illness was slower than that of 
Emily's had been ; and she was too unselfish to refuse trying 
means, from which, if she herself had little hope of benefit, her 
friends might hereafter derive a mournful satisfaction. 

May had come, and brought the milder weather longed for ; 
but Anne was worse for the very change. A little later on, it 
became colder, and she rallied, and poor Charlotte began to 
hope that, if May were once over, she might last for a long 
time. Miss Bronte wrote to engage the lodgings at Scarbor- 
ough — a place which Anne had formerly visited with the family 
to whom she was governess. They took a good-sized sitting- 
room, and an airy double-bedded room (both commanding a 
sea view), in one of the best situations of the town. Money 
was as nothing in comparison with life ; besides, Anne had a 
small legacy left to her by her godmother, and they felt that 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE IJRONTE. 8l 

she could not better employ this than in obtaining what might 
prolong life, if not restore health. 

'* She left her home May 24, 1849 — died May 28. Her life 
was calm, quiet, spiritual ; such was her end. Through the trials 
and fatigues of the journey, she evinced the pious courage and 
fortitude of a martyr. Dependence and helplessness were ever 
with her a far sorer trial than hard, racking pain. 

" The first stage of our journey was to York ; and here the 
dear invalid was so revived, so cheerful, and so happy, we drew 
consolation, and trusted that at least temporary improvement 
was to be derived from the change which she had so longed for, 
and her friends had so dreaded for her. 

** By her request we went to the Minster, and to her it was 
an overpowering pleasure ; not for its own imposing and im- 
pressive grandeur only, but because it brought to her suscepti- 
ble nature a vital and overwhelming sense of omnipotence. 
She said, while gazing at the structure, * If finite power can do 
this, what is the ....?' and here emotion stayed her speech, 
and she was hastened to a less exciting scene. 

"" Her v/eakness of body was great, but her gratitude for 
every mercy was greater. After such an exertion as walking 
to her bedroom, she would clasp her hands and raise her eyes 
in silent thanks, and she did this not to the exclusion of wonted 
prayer, for that too was performed on bended knee, ere she ac- 
cepted the rest of her couch. 

*' On the 25th we arrived at Scarborough ; our dear invalid 
having, during the journey, directed our attention to every 
prospect worthy of notice. 

*' On the 26th she drove on the sands for an hour ; and lest 
the poor donkey should be urged by its driver to a greater 
speed than her tender heart thought right, she took the reins, 
and drove herself. When joined by her friend, she was charg- 
ing the boy-master of the donkey to treat the poor animal well. 
She was ever fond of dumb things, and would give up her own 
comfort for them. 

"On Sunday, the 27th, she wished to go to church, and her 
eye brightened with the thought of once more worshiping her 
God among her fellow-creatures. We thought it prudent to 
dissuade her from the attempt, though it was evident her heart 
was longing to join in the public act of devotion and praise. 

** She walked a little in the afternoon, and meeting with a 
sheltered and comfortable seat near the beach, she begged we 
would leave her, and enjoy the various scenes near at hand, 
which were new to us but familiar to her. She loved the place, 
and wished us to share her preference. 



82 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

"The evening closed in with the most glorious sunset ever 
witnessed. The castle on the cliff stood in proud glory gilded by 
the rays of the declining sun. The distant ships glittered like 
burnished gold ; the little boats near the beach heaved on the 
ebbing tide, inviting t)ccupants. The view was grand beyond 
description. Anne was drawn in her easy-chair to the window, 
to enjoy the scene with us. Her face became illumined almost 
as much as the glorious scene she gazed upon. Little was said, 
for it was plain that her thoughts were driven by the imposing 
view before her to penetrate forward to the regions of unfad- 
ing glory. She again thought of public worship, and wished us 
to leave her and join those who were assembled at the house 
of God. We declined, gently urging the duty and pleasure of 
staying with her, who was now so dear and so feeble. On re- 
turning to her place near the fire, she conversed with her sister 
upon the propriety of returning to their home. She did not 
wish it for her own sake, she said ; she was fearing others might 
suffer more if her decease occurred where she was. She prob- 
ably thought the task of accompanying her lifeless remains on a 
long journey was more than her sister could bear — more than the 
bereaved father could bear, were she borne home another, and a 
third tenant of the family vault in the short space of nine months. 

** The night was passed without any apparent accession of 
illness. She rose at seven o'clock, and performed most of her 
toilet herself, by her expressed wish. Her sister always yielded 
such points, believing it was the truest kindness not to press 
inability when it was not acknowledged. Nothing occurred to 
excite alarm till about ii a. m. She then spoke of feeling a 
change. * She believed she had not long to live. Could she 
reach home alive, if we prepared immediately for departure ? * 
A physician was sent for. Her address to him was made with 
perfect composure. She begged him to say ' How long he 
thought she might live ; not to fear speaking the truth, for 
she was not afraid to die.' The doctor reluctantly admitted 
that the angel of death was already arrived, and that life was 
ebbing fast. She thanked him for his truthfulness, and he 
departed, to come again very soon. She still occupied her 
easy-chair, looking so serene, so reliant ; there was no opening 
for grief as yet, though all knew the separation was at hand. 
She clasped her hands, and reverently invoked a blessing from 
on high ; first upon her sister, then upon her friend, to whom 
she said, * Be a sister in my stead. Give Charlotte as much of 
your company as you can.' She then thanked each for her 
kindness and attention. 

" Ere long the restlessness of approaching death appeared, 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 83 

and she was borne to the sofa ; on being asked if she were easier, 
she looked gratefully at her questioner, and said : * It is not 
you who can give me ease, but soon all will be well, through the 
merits of our Redeemer/ Shortly after this, seeing that her 
sister could hardly restrain her grief, she said : * Take courage, 
Charlotte ; take courage/ Her faith never failed, and her eye 
never dimmed till about two o'clock, when she calmly and with- 
out a sigh passed from the temporal to the eternal. So still 
and so hallowed were her last hours and moments. There was 
no thought of assistance or of dread. The doctor came and 
went two or three times. The hostess knew that death was 
near, yet so little was the house disturbed by the presence of 
the dying, and the sorrow of those so nearly bereaved, that 
dinner was announced as ready, through the half-opened door, 
as the living sister was closing the eyes of the dead one. She 
could now no more stay the welled-up grief of her sister with 
her emphatic and dying * Take courage,' and it burst forth in 
brief but agonizing strength. Charlotte's affection, however, 
had another channel, and there it turned in thought, in care, 
and in tenderness. There was bereavement, but there was not 
solitude ; sympathy was at hand, and it was accepted. With 
calmness came the consideration of the removal of the dear 
remains to their home resting-place. This melancholy task, 
however, was never performed ; for the afflicted sister decided 
to lay the flower in the place where it had fallen. She believed 
that to do so would accord with the wishes of the departed. 
She had no preference for place. She thought not of the 
grave, for that is but the body's goal, but of all that is beyond it. 
** Her remains rest 

" where the south sun warms the now dear sod, 
** Where the ocean billows lave and strike the steep and turf-covered rock." 

Anne died on the Monday. On the Tuesday Charlotte 
wrote to her father ; but, knowing that his presence was re- 
quired for some annual church solemnity at Haworth, she in- 
formed him that she had made all necessary arrangements for 
the interment, and that the funeral would take place so soon 
that he could hardly arrive in time for it. 

Mr. Bronte wrote to urge Charlotte's longer stay at the sea- 
side. Her health and spirits were sorely shaken ; and much 
as he naturally longed to see his only remaining child, he felt 
it right to persuade her to take, with her friend, a few more 
weeks' change of scene — though even that could not bring 
change of thought. 



84 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 



CHAPTER X. 

The tale of " Shirley " had been begun soon after the pub- 
lication of " Jane Eyre." If the reader will refer to the ac- 
count I have given of Miss Bronte's school days at Roe Head, 
he will there see how every place surrounding that house was 
connected with the Luddite riots, and will learn how stories 
and anecdotes of that time were rife among the inhabitants of 

the neighboring villages ; how Miss W herself, and the elder 

relations of most of her schoolfellows, must have known the 
actors in those grim disturbances. What Charlotte had heard 
there as a girl came up in her mind when, as a woman, she 
sought a subject for her next work ; and she sent to Leeds for 
a file of the Mercury of 1812, '13, and '14, in order to un- 
derstand the spirit of those eventful times. She was anxious to 
write of things she had known and seen ; and among the num- 
ber was the West Yorkshire character, for which any tale laid 
among the Luddites would afford full scope. In ^' Shirley " 
she took the idea of most of her characters from life, although 
the incidents and situations were, of course, fictitious. She 
thought that if these last were purely imaginary, she might draw 
from the real without detection, but in this she was mistaken ; 
her studies were too closely accurate. This occasionally led 
her into difficulties. People recognized themselves, or were 
recognized by others, in her graphic descriptions of their per- 
sonal appearance, and modes of action and turns of thought ; 
though they \vere placed in new positions, and figured away in 
scenes far different to those in which their actual life had been 
passed. Miss Bronte was struck by the force or peculiarity of 
the character of some one whom she knew ; she studied it, and 
analyzed it with subtle power ; and having traced it to its germ, 
she took that germ as the nucleus of an imaginary character, 
and worked outward, thus reversing the process of analyza- 
tion, and unconsciously reproducing the same external devel- 
opment. The " three curates " were real living men, haunting 
Haworth and the neighboring district ; and so obtuse in per- 
ce})tion that, after the first burst of anger at having their ways 
and habits chronicled was over, they rather enjoyed the joke of 
calling each other by the names she had given them. " Mrs. 
Pryor " was well known to many who loved the original dearly. 
The whole family of the Yorkes were, I have been assured, 
almost daguerreotypes. Indeed, Miss Bronte told me that, 
before pul)lication, she had sent those parts of the novel, in 
which these remarkable persons are introduced, to one of the 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 85 

sons ; and his reply, after reading it, was simply that '^ she had 
not drawn them strong enough." From those many-sided sons, 
I suspect, she drew all that there was of truth in the characters of 
the heroes in her first two works. They, indeed, were almost the 
only young men she knew intimately, besides her brother. 
There was much friendship, and still more confidence, between 
the Bronte family and them — although their intercourse was 
often broken and irregular. There was never any warmer feel- 
ing on either side. 

The character of Shirley herself is Charlotte's representation 
of Emily. I mention this because all that I, a stranger, have 
been able to learn about her has not tended to give either me, 
or my readers, a pleasant impression of her. But we must re- 
member how little we are acquainted with her compared to 
that sister, who, out of her more intimate knowledge, says that 
she *^ was genuinely good and truly great," and who tried to 
depict her character in Shirley Keeldar, as what Emily Bronte 
would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity. 

Miss Bronte took extreme pains with ^' Shirley." She felt 
that the fame she had acquired imposed upon her a double 
responsibility. She tried to make her novel like a piece of ac- 
tual life — feeling sure that if she but represented the product 
of personal experience and observation truly, good would come 
out of it in the long run. She carefully studied the different 
reviews and criticisms that had appeared on *' Jane Eyre,'* in 
hopes of extracting precepts and advice from which to profit. 

Down into the very midst of her writing came the bolts of 
death. She had nearly finished the second volume of her tale 
when Branwell died, — after him Emily, — after her Anne ; 
the pen, laid down when there were three sisters living and 
loving, was taken up when one alone remained. Well might 
she call the first chapter that she wrote after this, *'The Valley 
of the Shadow of Death." 

I knew in part what the unknown author of *' Shirley " must 
havt suffered, when I read those pathetic words which occur 
at the' end of this and the beginning of the succeeding 
chapter : 

"Till break of day, she wrestled with God in earnest prayer. 

"Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. 
Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the 
forehead ; the suj)plicant may cry for mercy with that sound- 
less voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. 
* Spare my beloved,' it may implore. * Heal my life's life. 
Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my 
whole nature. God of heaven — bend — hear — be clement ! ' 



86 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

And after this cry and strife, the sun may rise and see him 
worsted. That opening morn, which used to salute him with 
the whispers of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, 
as its first accents, from the dear lips which color and heat 
have quitted — ' Oh ! I have had a suffering night. This 
morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams 
1 am unused to have troubled me.* " 

She went on with her work steadily. But it was dreary to 
write without any one to listen to the progress of her tale, — 
to find fault or to sympathize, — while pacing the length of the 
parlor in the evenings, as in the days that were no more. 
Three sisters had done this, — then two, the other sister drop- 
ping off from the walk, — and now one was left desolate, to 
listen for echoing steps that never came, — and to hear the 
wind sobbing at the windows, with an almost articulate sound. 

But she wrote on, struggling against her own feelings of ill- 
ness ; " continually recurring feelings of slight cold ; slight 
soreness in the throat and chest, of which, do what I will," she 
writes, *' I cannot get rid." 

"September io, 1849. 

" My piece of work is at last finished, and dispatched to its 
destination. You must now tell me when there is a chance of 
your being able to come here " 

to w. s. williams, esq. 

"September 21, 1849. 

"My Dear Sir : I am obliged to you for preserving my secret, 
being at least as anxious as ever (jnore anxious I cannot well 
be) to keep quiet. You asked me in one of your letters lately, 
whether I thought I should escape identification in Yorkshire. 
I am so little known that I think I shall. Besides the book is 
far less founded on the Real than perhaps appears. It would 
be difficult to explain to you how little actual experience I have 
had of life, how few persons I have known, and how very few 
have known me. 

" As an instance how the characters have been managed, take 
that of Mr. Helstone. If this character had an original, it was 
in the person of a clergyman who died some years since at the 
advanced age of eighty. I never saw him except once — at the 
consecration of a church — when I was a child of ten years old. 
I was then struck with his appearance and stern, martial air. 
At a subsequent period I heard him talked about in the neighbor- 
hood where he had resided : some mention him with enthusiasm 
— others with detestation. I listened to various anecdotes, 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. Sy 

balanced evidence against evidence, and drew an inference. 
The original of Mr. Hall I have seen ; he knows me slightly ; 
but he would as soon think I had closely observed him or taken 
him for a character — he would as soon, indeed, suspect me of 
writing a book — a novel — as he would his dog Prince. Mar- 
garet Hall called * Jane Eyre ' a * wicked book,* on the au- 
thority of the Quarterly ; an expression which, coming from 
her, I will here confess, struck somewhat deep. It opened 
my eyes to the harm the Quarterly had done. Margaret would 
not have called it ^ wicked,' if she had not been told so. 

" No matter, — whether known or unknown, — misjudged or 
the contrary, — I am resolved not to write otherwise. I shall 
bend as my powers tend. The two human beings who under- 
stood me, and whom I understood, are gone ; I have some that 
love me yet, and whom I love, without expecting, or having a 
right to expect, that they shall perfectly understand me. I am 
satisfied ; but I must have my own way in the matter of writing. 
The loss of what we possess nearest and dearest to us in this 
world produces an effect upon the character : we search out 
what we have yet left that can support, and when found, we 
cling to it with a hold of new-strung tenacity. The faculty of 
imagination lifted me when I was sinking, three months ago ; 
its active exercise has kept my head above water since ; its 
results cheer me now, for I feel they have enabled me to give 
pleasure to others. I am thankful to God, who gave me the 
faculty ; and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this 
gift, and to profit by its possession. 

*^ Yours sincerely, 

*' Charlotte Bronte." 

Toward the close of October in this year she went to pay a 
visit to her friend ; but her enjoyment in the holiday, which 
she had so long promised herself when her work was com- 
pleted, was deadened by a continual feeling of ill-health ; 
either the change of air or the foggy weather produced con- 
stant irritation at the chest. Moreover, she was anxious about 
the impression which her second work would produce on the 
public mind. For obvious reasons, an author is more suscep- 
tible to opinions pronounced on the book which follows a great 
success than he has ever been before. Whatever be the value 
of fame, he has it in his possession, and is not willing to have 
it dimmed or lost. 

** Shirley " was published on October 26. 

Wlien it came out, but before reading it, Mr. Lewes wrote 
to tell her of his intention of reviewing it in the Edinburgh, 



88 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

Her correspondence with him had ceased for some time ; much 
had occurred since. 

to g. h. lewes, esq. 

^' November i, 1849. 
" My Dear Sir : It is about a year and a half since you wrote 
to me ; but it seems a longer period, because since then it has 
been my lot to pass some black milestones in the journey of 
life. Since then there have been intervals when I have ceased 
to care about literature and critics and fame ; when I have 
lost sight of whatever was prominent in my thoughts at the first 
publication of 'Jane Eyre '; but now 1 want these things to 
come back vividly, if possible ; consequently, it was a pleas- 
ure to receive your note. I wish you did not think me a 
woman. I wish all reviewers believed ' Currer Bell * to be a 
man ; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, 
keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becom- 
ing to my sex ; where I am not what you consider graceful, 
you will condemn me. All mouths will be open against that 
first chapter ; and that first chapter is as true as the Bible, nor 
is it exceptional. Come what will, I cannot, when I write, 
think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in 
femininity ; it is not on those terms, or with such ideas, I ever 
took pen in hand ; and if it is only on such terms my writing 
will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble 
it no more. Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily 
return. Standing afar off, I now watch to see what will be- 
come of ' Shirley.' My expectations are very low, and my 
anticipations somewhat sad and bitter ; still, I earnestly con- 
jure you to say honestly what you think ; flattery would be 
worse than vain ; there is no consolation in flattery. As for 
condemnation I cannot, on reflection, see why I should much 
fear it ; there is no one but myself to suffer therefrom, and 
both happiness and suff'ering in this life soon pass away. 
Wishing you all success in your Scottish expedition, I am, 
dear sir, yours sincerely, C. Bell." 

Miss Bronte, as we have seen, had been as anxious as ever to 
preserve her incognito in *' Shirley." She even fancied that 
there were fewer traces of a female pen in it than in '* Jane 
Eyre "; and thus, when the earliest reviews were published, 
and asserted that the mysterious writer must be a woman, she 
was much disappointed. She especially disliked the lowering 
of the standard by which to judge a work of fiction, if it pro- 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 89 

ceeded from a feminine pen ; and praise, mingled with pseudo- 
gallant allusions to her sex, mortified her far more than actual 
blame. 

But the secret, so jealously preserved, was oozing out at last. 
The publication of " Shirley " seemed to fix the conviction 
that the writer was an inhabitant of the district where the story 
was laid. - And a clever Haworth man, who had somewhat 
risen in the world, and gone to settle in Liverpool, read the 
novel, and was struck with some of the names of places men- 
tioned, and knew the dialect in which parts of it were written. 
He became convinced that it was the production of some one in 
Haworth. But he could not imagine who in that village could 
have written such a work except Miss Bronte. Proud of his 
conjecture, he divulged the suspicion (which was almost cer- 
tainty) in the columns of a Liverpool paper ; thus the heart of 
the mystery came slowly creeping out ; and a visit to London, 
which Miss Bronte paid toward the end of the year 1849, made 
it distinctly known. She had been all along on most happy 
terms with her publishers ; and their kindness had beguiled 
some of these weary, solitary hours which had so often occurred 
of late, by sending for her perusal boxes of books more suited 
to her tastes than any she could procure from the circulating 
library at Keighley. 

In consequence of a long protracted state of languor, head- 
ache, and sickness, to which the slightest exposure to cold 
added sensations of hoarseness and soreness at the chest, she 
determined to take the evil in time, as much for her father's 
sake as for her own, and to go up to London and consult some 
physician there. It was not her first intention to visit any- 
where ; but the friendly urgency of her publishers prevailed, 
and it was decided that she was to become the guest of Mr. 
Smith. 

At the end of November she went up to the *^ big Babylon,** 
and was immediately plunged into what appeared to her a 
whirl ; for changes, and scenes, and stimulus which would have 
been a trifle to others, were much to her. As was always the 
case with strangers, she was a little afraid at first of the family 
into which she was now received, fancying that the ladies 
looked on her with a mixture of respect and alarm ; but in a 
few days, if this state of feeling ever existed, her simple, shy, 
quiet manners, her dainty personal and household ways, had 
quite done away with it, and she says that she thinks they begin 
to like her, and that she likes them much, for ** kindness is a 
potent heart-winner." She had stipulated that she should not 
be expected to see many people. The recluse life she had led 



90 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

was the cause of a nervous shrinking from meeting any fresh 
face, which lasted all her life long. Still, she longed to have 
an idea of the personal appearance and manners of some of 
those whose writings or letters had interested her. Mr. Thack- 
eray was accordingly invited to meet her. 

Respecting her visit to London she writes thus : 

"December 17. 

" Here I am at Haworth once more. I feel as if I had come 
out of an exciting whirl. Not that the hurry and stimulus 
would have seemed much to one accustomed to society and 
change, but to me they were very marked. My strength and 
spirits too often proved quite insufficient to the demand on 
their exertions. I used to bear up as long as I possibly could, 
for, when I flagged, I could see Mr. Smith become disturbed ; 
he always thought that something had been said or done to 
annoy me — which never once happened, for I met with perfect 
good breeding even from antagonists — men who had done 
their best or worst to write me down. I explained to him, 
over and over again, that my occasional silence was only fail- 
ure of the power to talk, never of the will 

" Thackeray is a Titan of mind. His presence and powers 
impress one deeply in an intellectual sense ; I do not see him or 
know him as a man. All the others are subordinate. I have 
esteem for some, and, I trust, courtesy for all. I do not, of 
course, know what they thought of me, but I believe most 
of them expected me to come out in a more marked, eccentric, 
striking light. I believed they desired more to admire and 
more to blame. I felt sufficiently at my ease with all but 
Thackeray ; with him I was fearfully stupid." 

She returned to her quiet home and her noiseless daily duties. 
I was anxious to know from her friend " Mary," if, in the 
letters which Charlotte wrote to her, she had ever spoken with 
much pleasure of the fame which she had earned. To this 
and some similar inquiries Mary answers : 

*^She thought literary fame a better introduction than any 
other, and this was what she wanted it for. When at last she 
got it, she lamented that it was of no use. * Her solitary life 
had disqualified her for society. She had become unready, 
nervous, excitable, and either incapable of speech, or talked 
vapidly.' She wrote me this concerning her late visits to Lon- 
don. Her fame, when it came, seemed to make no difference 
to her. She was just as solitary, and her life as deficient 
in interest as before. * For swarms of people I don't care,' she 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 9 1 

wrote ; and then implied that she had had glimpses of a pleas- 
anter life, but she had come back to her work at home. She 
never criticised her books to me, farther than to express utter 
weariness of them and the labor they had given her." 

Her life at Haworth was so unvaried that the postman's call 
was the event of her day. Yet she dreaded the great tempta- 
tion of centering all her thoughts upon this one time and los- 
ing her interest in the smaller hopes and employments of the 
remaining hours. Thus she conscientiously denied herself the 
pleasure of writing letters too frequently, because the answers 
(when she received them) took the flavor out of the rest of her 
life ; or her disappointment, when the replies did not arrive, 
lessened her energy for her home duties. 

The winter of this year in the north was hard and cold ; it 
affected Miss Bronte's health less than usual, however, proba- 
bly because the change and medical advice she had taken in 
London had done her good ; probably, also, because her friend 
had come to pay her a visit, and enforced that attention to 
bodily symptoms which Miss Bronte was too apt to neglect, from 
a fear of becoming nervous herself about her own state, and 
thus infecting her father. But she could scarcely help feeling 
much depressed in spirits as the anniversary of her sister Emily's 
death came round ; all the recollections connected with it were 
painful,, yet there were no outward events to call off her atten- 
tion and prevent them from pressing hard upon her. At this 
time, as at many others, I find her alluding in her letters to the 
solace which she found in the books sent her from Cornhill. 

By this time, " Airedale, Wharfedale, Calderdale, and Rib- 
blesdale '* all knew the place of residence of Currer Bell. She 
compared herself to the ostrich hiding its head in the sand ; 
and says that she still buries hers in the heath of Haworth 
moors ; but '' the concealment is but self-delusion.** 

Indeed it was. Far and wide in the West Riding had spread 
the intelligence that Currer Bell was no other than a daughter 
of the. venerable clergyman of Haworth ; the village itself 
caught up the excitement. 

*' Mr. , having finished ^ Jane Eyre,' is now crying out 

for the' other book '; he is to have it next week Mr. 

has finished 'Shirley'; he is delighted with it. John 's wife 

seriously thought him gone wrong in the head, as she heard him 
giving vent to roars of laughter as he sat alone, clapping and 
stamping on the floor. He would read all the scenes about the 
curates aloud to papa.". . . . " Martha came in yesterday, puff- 
ing and blowing, and much excited. ' I've heard sich news ! ' 
she began. 'What about?* ' Please, ma'am, you've been and 



92 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

written two books — the grandest books that ever was seen. My 

father has heard it at HaHfax, and Mr. G T and 

Mr. G and Mr. M at Bradford ; and they are going to 

have a meeting at the Mechanics' Institute, and to settle about 
ordering them.' * Hold your tongue, Martha, and be off.' I 

fell into a cold sweat. ^ Jane Eyre ' will be read by J B , 

by Mrs. T , and B . Heaven help, keep, and deliver 

me !".... ^* The Haworth people have been making great 
fools of themselves about ^ Shirley '; they have taken it in an 
enthusiastic liglit. When they got the volumes at the Me- 
chanics' Institute, all the members wanted them. They cast 
lots for the whole three, and whoever got a volume was only 
allowed to keep it two days, and was to be fined a shilling per 
diem for longer detention. It would be mere nonsense and 
vanity to tell you what they say." 

The tone of these extracts is thoroughly consonant with the 
spirit of Yorkshire and Lancashire people, who try as long as 
they can to conceal their emotions of pleasure under a banter- 
ing exterior, almost as if making fun of themselves. Miss 
Bronte was extremely touched, in the secret places of her warm 
heart, by the way in which those who had known her from her 
childhood were proud and glad of her success. All round 
about the news had spread ; strangers came " from beyond 
Burnley " to see her, as she went quietly and unconsciously into 
church ; and the sexton ** gained many a half-crown " for 
pointing her out. 

But there were drawbacks to this hearty and kindly appre- 
ciation which was so much more valuable than fame. The 
January number of the Edinburgh Revieia had contained the 
article on ^* Shirley," of which her correspondent, Mr. Lewes, 
was the writer. I have said that Miss Bronte was especially 
anxious to be criticised as a writer, without relation to her sex 
as a woman. Whether right or wrong, her feeling was strong 
on this point. Now although this review of " Shirley " is not 
disrespectful toward women, yet the headings of the first two 
pages ran thus : '^Mental Equality of the Sexes?" "Female 
Literature," and through the whole article the fact of the 
author's sex is never forgotten. 

A few days after the review appeared Mr. Lewes received 
the following note — rather in the style of Anne, Countess of 
Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery : 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 93 



TO G. H. LEWES, ESQ. 

" I can been my guard against my enemies, but God deliver 
me from my friends ! 

"CuRRER Bell." 

In some explanatory notes on her letters to him, with which 
Mr. Lewes has favored me, he says : 

" Seeing that she was unreasonable because angry, I wrote 
to remonstrate with her on quarreling with the severity and 
frankness of a review which certainly was dictated by real ad- 
miration and real friendship ; even under its objections the 
friend's voice could be heard." 

The following letter is her reply : 

to g. h. lewes, esq. 

*' January 19, 1850. 

"My Dear Sir : I will tell you why I was so hurt by that re- 
view in the Edinburgh j not because its criticism was keen or 
its blame sometimes severe ; not because its praise was stinted 
(for, indeed, I think you give me quite as much praise as I de- 
serve), but because, after I had said earnestly that I wished 
critics would judge me as an author^ not as a woman, you 
so roughly — I even thought so cruelly — handled the question 
of sex. I dare say you meant no harm, and perhaps you will 
not now be able to understand why I was so grieved at what 
you will probably deem such a trifle ; but grieved I was, and 
indignant too. 

** There was a passage or two which you did quite wrong to 
write. 

" However, I will not bear malice against you for it ; I know 
Avhat your nature is : it is not a bad or unkind one, though you 
would often jar terribly on some feelings with whose recoil 
and quiver you could not possibly sympathize. I imagine you 
are both enthusiastic and implacable, as you are at once saga- 
cious and careless ; you know much and discover much, but 
you are in such a hurry to tell it all you never give yourself 
time to think how your reckless eloquence may affect others ; 
and, what is more, if you knew how it did affect them, you 
would not much care. 

" However, I shake hands with you ; you have excellent 
points ; you can be generous. I still feel angry, and think I 
do well to be angry ; but it is the anger one experiences for 



94 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

rough play rather than for foul play — I am yours, with a cer- 
tain respect, and more chagrin, 

"CuRRER Bell." 

It was thought desirable, about this time, to republish 
"Wuthering Heights'* and * 'Agnes Grey," the works of the 
two sisters, and Charlotte undertook the task of editing them. 

She wrote to Mr. Williams, September 29, 1850: **It is my 
intention to write a few lines of remark on ' Wuthering Heights,' 
w^hich, however, I propose to place apart as a brief preface be- 
fore the tale. I am likewise compelling myself to read it 
over, for the first time of opening the book since my sister's 
death. Its power fills me with renewed admiration ; i3ut yet I 
am oppressed ; the reader is scarcely ever permitted a taste of 
unalloyed pleasure; every beam of sunshine is poured down 
through black bars of threatening cloud; every page is sur- 
charged with a sort of moral electricity ; and the writer was 
unconscious of all this — nothing could make her conscious of it. 

'*And this makes me reflect — perhaps I am too incapable of 
perceiving the faults and peculiarities of my own style. 

**I should wish to revise the proofs, if it be not too great an 
inconvenience to send them. It seems to me advisable to 
modify the orthography of the old servant Joseph's speeches; 
for though, as it stands, it exactly renders the Yorkshire dialect 
to a Yorkshire ear, yet I am sure Southrons must find it unin- 
telligible ; and thus one of the most graphic characters in the 
book is lost on them. 

"I grieve to say that I possess no portrait of either of my 
sisters." 

CHAPTER XI. 

I SHALL now make an extract from one of her letters, which 
is purposely displaced as to time. I quote it because it relates 
to a third offer of marriage which she had, and because I find 
that some are apt to imagine, from the extraordinary powder 
with which she represented the passion of love in her novels, 
that she herself was easily susceptible of it. 

"Could I ever feel enough for to accept of him as a 

husband? Friendship — gratitude — esteem — I have ; but each 
moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes 
fastened on me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away, I 
feel far more gently toward him; it is only close by that I 
grow rigid, stiffening with a strange mixture of apprehension 
and anger, which nothing softens but his retreat, and a perfect 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 95 

subduing of his manner. I did not want to be proud, nor 
intend to be proud, but I was forced to be so. Most true it 
is, that we. are overruled by One above us; that in his hands 
our very will is as clay in the hands of the potter.'* 

I have now named all the offers of marriage she ever 
received, until that was made which she finally accepted. 
The gentleman referred to in this letter retained so much 
regard for her as to be her friend to the end of her life; a 
circumstance to his credit and to hers. 

Before her friend E. took her departure, Mr. Bronte caught 
cold, and continued for some weeks much out of health, with 
an attack of bronchitis. His spirits, too, became much de- 
pressed; and all his daughter's efforts were directed toward 
cheering him. 

When he grew better, and had regained his previous strength, 
she resolved to avail herself of an invitation, which she had 
received some time before, to pay a visit in London. This 
year, 185 1, was, as every one remembers, the time of the great 
Exhibition ; but even with that attraction in prospect, she did 
not intend to stay there long ; and, as usual, she made an agree- 
ment with her friends, before finally accepting their offered 
hospitality, that her sojourn at their house was to be as quiet 
as ever, since any other way of proceeding disagreed with her 
both mentally and physically. She never looked excited ex- 
cept for a moment, when something in conversation called her 
out; but she often felt so, even about comparative trifles, and 
the exhaustion of reaction was sure to follow. Under such 
circumstances, she always became extremely thin and haggard; 
yet she averred that the change invariably did her good after- 
ward. 

Her increasing indisposition subdued her at last, in spite of 
all her efforts of reason and will. She tried to forget oppress- 
ive recollections in writing. Her publishers were importunate 
for a new book from her pen. '' Villette " was begun, but she 
lacked power to continue it. 

" It is not at all likely [she says] that my book will be 
ready at the time you mention. If my health is spared, I shall 
get on with it as fast as is consistent with its being done, if not 
we//, yet as well as I can do it. Not one whit faster. When 
the mood leaves me (it has left me now, without vouchsafing 
so much as a word or a message when it will return) I put by 
the MS. and wait till it comes back again. God knows, I 
sometimes have to wait long — very long it seems to me. Mean- 
time, if I might make a request to you, it would be this. 
Please to say nothing about my book till it is wTitten and \x\ 



g6 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

your hands. You may not like it. I am not myself elated 
with it as far as it has gone, and authors, you need not be 
told, are always tenderly indulgent, even blindly partial, to 
their own. Even if it should turn out reasonably well, still I 
regard it as ruin to the prosperity of an ephemeral book like a 
novel to be much talked of beforehand, as if it were something 
great. People are apt to conceive, or at least to profess, ex- 
aggerated expectation, such as no performance can realize ; 
then ensue disappointment and the due revenge, detraction, 
and failure. If, when I write, I were to think of the critics who, 
I know, are waiting for Currer Bell, ready ^ to break all his 
bones or ever he comes to the bottom of the den,' my hand 
would fall paralyzed on my desk. However, I can but do my 
best, and then muffle my head in the mantle of Patience, and 
sit down at her feet and wait." 

When Miss Bronte wrote this, on December 8, she was suf- 
fering from a bad cold, and pain in her side. Her illness in- 
creased, and on December 17, she — so patient, silent, and 
enduring of suffering — so afraid of any unselfish taxing of 
others — had to call to her friend E. for help. 

Of course, her friend went ; and a certam amount of bene- 
fit was derived from her society, always so grateful to Miss 
Bronte. But the evil was now too deep-rooted to be more 
than palliated for a time by *' the little cheerful society" for 
which she so touchingly besought. 

A relapse came on before long. She was very ill, and the 
remedies employed took an unusual effect on her peculiar sen- 
sitiveness of constitution. Mr. Bronte was miserably anxious 
about the state of his only remaining child, for she was 
reduced to the last degree of weakness, as she had been unable 
to swallow food for above a week before. She rallied, and 
derived her sole sustenance from half a teacup of liquid, ad- 
ministered by teaspoonfuls, in the course of the day. Yet 
she kept out of bed, for her father's sake, and struggled in 
solitary patience through her worst hours. 

When she was recovering, her spirits needed support, and 
then she yielded to her friend's entreaty that she would visit 
her. All the time that Miss Bronte's illness had lasted, 

Miss had been desirous of coming to her; but she refused 

to avail herself of this kindness, saying that **it was enough 
to burden herself; that it would be misery to annoy another;" 
and, even at her worst time, she tells her friend, with humor- 
ous glee, how coolly she had managed to capture one of 

Miss 's letters to Mr. Bronte, which she suspected was of 

a kind to aggravate his alarm about his daughter's state^ 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 97 

**and at once conjecturing its tenor, made its contents her 
own." 

Happily for all parties, Mr. Bronte was wonderfully well 
this winter; good sleep, good spirits, and an excellent steady 
appetite, all seemed to mark vigor; and in such a state of 
health, Charlotte could leave him to spend a week with her 
friend, without any great anxiety. 

She benefited greatly by the kind attentions and cheerful 
society of the family with whom she went to stay. They did 
not care for her in the least as ''Currer Bell," but had known 
and loved her for years as Charlotte Bronte. To them her 
invalid weakness was only a fresh claim upon their tender 
regard, from the solitary woman whom they had first known 
as a little motherless school-girl. 

As the milder weather came on, her health improved and 
her power of writing increased. She set herself with redoubled 
vigor to the work before her, and denied herself pleasure 
for the purpose of steady labor. Hence she writes to her 
friend :■ 

to w. s. williams, esq. 

'' July 28, 1852. 

" My Dear Sir : Is it in contemplation to publish the new 
edition of ' Shirley ' soon ? Would it not be better to defer it 
for a time ? In reference to a part of your letter, permit me to 
express this wish, — and I trust in doing so, I shall not be re- 
garded as stepping out of. my position as an author, and en- 
croaching on the arrangements of business, — viz., that no an- 
nouncement of a new work by the author of ' Jane Eyre ' 
shall be made till the MS. of such work is actually in my pub- 
lisher's hands. Perhaps w^e are none of us justified in speaking 
very decidedly where the future is concerned; but for some 
too much caution in such calculations can scarcely be observed; 
amongst this number I must class myself. Nor, in doing so, 
can I assume an apologetic tone. He does right who does his 
best. 

^' Last autumn I got on for a time quickly. I ventured to 
look forward to spring as the period of publication ; my health 
gave way ; I passed such a winter as, having been once ex- 
perienced, will never be forgotten. The spring proved little 
better than a protraction of trial. The warm weather and a 
visit to the sea have done me much good physically ; but as 
yet I have recovered neither elasticity of animal spirits nor 
flow of the power of composition. And if it were otherwise, 
the difference would be of no avail ; my time and thoughts 



98 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

are at present taken up with close attendance on my father, 
whose health is just now in a very critical state, the heat of 
the weather having produced determination of blood to the 
head. 

" I am, yours sincerely, 

'^^C. Bronte.'* 

Later she writes : 

^' I thought I would persist in denying myself till I had 
done my work, but I find it won't do ; the matter refuses to 
progress, and this excessive solitude presses too heavily ; so 
let me see your dear face, E., just for one reviving week." 

Miss — — 's visit did her much good. Pleasant companion- 
ship during the day produced, for the time, the unusual blessing 
of calm repose at night ; and, after her friend's departure, 
she was well enough to '* fall to business," and write away, 
almost incessantly, at her story of ^' Villette," now drawing to 
a conclusion. The following letter to Mr. Smith seems to 
have accompanied the first part of the MS. 

" October 30, 1852. 
** My Dear Sir : You must notify honestly what you think of 
' Villette ' when you have read it. I can hardly tell you how I 
hunger to hear some opinion besides my own, and how I have 
sometimes desponded, and almost despaired, because there 
was no one to whom to read a line, or of whom to ask a coun- 
sel. 'Jane Eyre' was not written under such circumstances, 
nor were two-thirds of ' Shirley.' I got so miserable about it, 
I could bear no allusion to the book. It is not finished yet ; 
but now I hope. As to the anonymous publication, I have this 
to say : If the withholding of the author's name should tend 
materially to injure the publisher's interest, to interfere with 
booksellers' orders, etc., I would not press the point ; but if 
no such detriment is contingent, I should be most thankful for 
the sheltering shadow of an incognito. I seem to dread the 
advertisements — the large-lettered ' Currer Bell's New Novel,' or 
' New Work, by the Author of '' Jane Eyre." ' These, however, 
I feel well enough, are the transcendentalisms of a retired 

wretch ; so you must speak frankly I shall be glad to 

see * Colonel Esmond.' My objection to the second volume 
lay here : I thought it contained decidedly too much history 
— too little story." 



life of charlotte bronte. 99 

to g. smith, esq. 

*' November 3. 

" My Dear Sir : I feel very grateful for your letter ; it re- 
lieved me much, for I was a good deal harassed by doubts as 
to how ' Villette ' might appear in other eyes than my own. I 
feel in some degree authorized to rely on your favorable im- 
pressions, because you are quite right where you hint disap- 
probation. You have exactly hit two points at least where I 
was conscious of defect : the discrepancy, the want of perfect 
harmony, between Graham's boyhood and manhood — the 
angular abruptness of his change of sentiment toward Miss 
Fanshaw^e. You must remember, though, that in secret he had 
for some time appreciated that young lady at a somewhat de- 
pressed standard — held her a /i/fle lower than the angels. But 
still the reader ought to have been better made to feel this 
preparation toward a change of mood. As to the publishing 
arrangements, I leave them to Cornhill. There is, undoubt- 
edly, a certain force in what you say about the inexpediency of 
affecting a mystery which cannot be sustained ; so you must 
act as you think is for the best. I submit, also, to the adver- 
tisements in large letters, but under protest, and with a kind 
of ostrich-longing for concealment. Most of the third volume 
is given to the development of the ^ crabbed professor's ' char- 
acter. Lucy must not marry Dr. John ; he is far too youthful, 
handsome, bright-spirited, and sweet tempered ; he is a 
* curled darling' of nature and of fortune, and must draw a 
prize in life's lottery. His wife must be young, rich, pretty ; 
he must be made very happy indeed. If Lucy marries any- 
body, it must be the professor — a man in whom there is much 
to forgive, much to ^ put up with.' But I am not leniently dis- 
posed toward Miss Frost; from the beginning, I never meant 
to appoint her lines in pleasant places. The conclusion of 
this third volume is still a matter of some anxiety; I can but 
do my best, however. It would speedily be finished, could I 
ward off certain obnoxious headaches, which, whenever I get 
into the spirit of my work, are apt to seize and prostrate 
me 

'^Colonel Henry Esmond is just arrived. He looks very 
antique and distinguished in his Queen Anne's garb ; the peri- 
wig, sword, lace, and ruffles are very well represented by the 
old Spectator type." 

In reference to a sentence toward the close of this letter, I 
may mention that she told me that Mr. Bronte was anxious 



lOO LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

that her new tale should end well, as he disliked novels which 
left a melancholy impression upon the mind ; and he requested 
her to make her hero and heroine (Hke the heroes, and heroines 
in fairy tales) '* marry, and live very happily ever after." But 
the idea of M. Paul Emanuel's death at sea was stamped on 
her imagination, till it assumed the distinct force of reality ; 
and she could no more alter her fictitious ending than if they 
had been facts which she was relating. All she could do in 
compliance with her father's wish was so to veil the fate in 
oracular words, as to leave it to the character and discernment 
of her readers to interpret her meaning. 

to w. s. williams, esq. 

''November 6, 1852. 

'' My Dear Sir : I must not delay thanking you for your 
kind letter, with its candid and able commentary on ' Villette.' 
With many of your strictures I concur. The third volume 
may, perhaps, do away with some of the objections ; others 
still remain in force. I do not think the interest culminates 
anywhere to the degree you would wish. What climax there 
is does not come on till near the conclusion ; and even then, 
I doubt whether the regular novel reader will consider the 
' agony piled sufficiently high ' (as the Americans say), or the 
colors dashed on to the canvas with the proper amount of 
daring. Still, I fear, they must be satisfied with what is 
offered ; my palette affords no brighter tints ; were I to at- 
tempt to deepen the reds, or burnish the yellows, I should but 
botch. 

''Unless I am mistaken, the emotion of the book will be 
found to be kept throughout in tolerable subjection. As to 
the name of the heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety of 
thought made me decide upon giving her a cold name ; but, 
at first, I called her ' Lucy Snowe ' (spelt with an 'e'); which 
Snowe I afterward changed to ' Frost.' Subsequently, I rather 
regretted the change, and wished it ' Snowe ' again. If not 
too late, I should like the alteration to be made now through- 
out the MS. A co/d name she must have ; partly, perhaps, on 
the ^ lucits a non lucendo' principle — partly on that of the 'fit- 
ness of things,' for she has about her an external coldness. 

" You say that she may be thought morbid and weak, unless 
the history of her life be more fully given. I consider that 
she is both morbid and weak at times ; her character sets up 
no pretensions to unmixed strength, and anybody living her 
life would necessarily become morbid. It was no impetus of 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. lOI 

healthy feeling which urged her to the confessional, for in- 
stance ; it was the semi-delirium of solitary grief and sickness. 
If, however, the book does not express all this, there must be 
a great fault somewhere. I might explain away a few other 
points, but it would be too much like drawing a picture and 
then writing underneath the name of the object intended to 
be represented. We know what sort of a pencil that is which 
needs an ally in the pen. 

*^ Thanking you again for the clearness and fullness with 
which you have responded to my request for a statement of 
impressions, I am, my dear sir, yours very sincerely, 

**C. Bronte. 

'' I trust the work will be seen in MS. by no one except Mr. 
Smith and yourself." 

On a Saturday, a little later in this month. Miss Bronte com- 
pleted " Villette," and sent it off to her publishers. *' I said 
my prayers when I had done it. Whether it is well or ill done, 
I don't know ; D. V., I will now try and wait the issue quietly. 
The book, I think, will not be considered pretentious ; nor is 
it of a character to excite hostility." 

As her labor was ended, she felt at liberty to allow herself a 
little change. There were several friends anxious to see her 
and welcome her to their homes : Miss Martineau, Mrs. Smith, 
and her own faithful E. With the last, in the same letter as 
that in which she announced the completion of ^' Villette," she 
offered to. spend a week. She began, also, to consider whether 
it might not be well to avail herself of Mrs. Smith's kind invi- 
tation, with a view to the convenience of being on the spot to 
correct the proofs. 

The following letter is given, not merely on account of her 
own criticisms on ^' Villette," but because it shows how she had 
learned to mao^nifv the meanino^ of trifles as all do who live a 
self-contained and solitary life. Mr. Smith had been unable to 
write by the same post as that which brought the money for 
** Villette," and she consequently received it without a line. 
The friend with whom she was staying says that she immedi- 
ately fancied there was some disappointment about " Villette," 
or that some word or act of hers had given offense ; and had 
the Sunday intervened, and so allowed time for Mr. Smith's 
letter to make its appearance, she would certainly have crossed 
it on her way to London. 



i02 life of charlotte bronte. 

^' December 6, 1852. 

" My Dear Sir : The receipts have reached me safely. I re- 
ceived the first on Saturday, inclosed in a cover without a line, 
and had made up my mind to take the train on Monday, and 
go up to London to see what was the matter, and what had 
struck my publisher mute. On Sunday morning your letter 
came, and you have thus been spared the visitation of the un- 
announced and unsummoned apparition of Currer Bell in 
Cornhill. Inexplicable delays should be avoided when possi- 
ble, for they are apt to urge those subjected to their harassment 
to sudden and impulsive steps. 

** I must pronounce you right again, in your complaint of the 
transfer of interest in the third volume from one set of char- 
acters to another. It is not pleasant, and it will probably be 
found as unwelcome to the reader, as it was, in a sense, com- 
pulsory upon the writer. The spirit of romance would have 
indicated another course, far more flowery and inviting ; it 
would have fashioned a paramount hero, kept faithfully with 
him, and made him supremely worshipful ; he should have 
been an idol, and not a mute, unresponding idol either ; but 
this would have been unlike real life — inconsistent with truth — 
at variance with probability. I greatly apprehend, however, 
that the weakest character in the book is the one I aimed at 
making the most beautiful ; and, if this be the case, the fault 
lies in its wanting the germ of the rea/ — in its being purely 
imaginary. I felt that this character lacked substance ; I 
fear that the reader will feel the same. Union with it 
resembles too much the fate of Ixion, who was mated wi^-h a 
cloud. The childhood of Paulina is, however, I think, pretty 
well imagined, but her .... [the remainder of this inter- 
esting sentence is torn off the letter]. A brief visit to Lon- 
don becomes thus more practicable, and if your mother will 
kindly write, when she has time, and name a day after Christ- 
mas which will suit her, I shall have pleasure, papa's health 
permitting, in availing myself of her invitation. I wish I could 
come in time to correct some at least of the proofs ; it would 
save trouble." 

One of the deepest interests of her life centers naturally 
round her marriage, and the preceding circumstances ; but 
more than all other events (because of more recent date, and 
concerning another as intimately as herself), it requires delicate 
handling on my part, lest I intrude too roughly on what is 
most sacred to memory. Yet I have two reasons, which seem 
to me good and valid ones, for giving some particulars of the 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 103 

course of events which led to her few months of wedded hfe — 
that short spell of exceeding happiniess. The first is my desire 
to call attention to the fact that Mr. Nicholls was one who had 
seen her almost daily for years ; seen her as a daughter, a 
sister, a mistress, and a friend. He was not a man to be 
attracted by any kind /of literary fame. I imagine that this, 
by itself, would rather repel him when he saw it in the posses- 
sion of a woman. He was a grave, reserved, conscientious 
man, with a deep sense of religion and of his duties as one of 
its ministers. 

In silence he had watched her, and loved her long. The 
love of such a man — a daily spectator of her manner of life for 
years — is a great testimony to her character as a woman. 

How deep his affection was I scarcely dare to tell, even if I 
could in words. She did not know — she had hardly begun to 
suspect — that she was the object of any peculiar regard on his 
part, when, in this very December, he came one evening to tea. 
After tea, she returned from the study to her own sitting-room 
as was her custom, leaving her father and his curate together. 
Presently she heard the study-door open, and expected to hear 
the succeeding clash of the front door. Instead, came a tap ; 
and, " like lightning, it flashed upon me what was coming. 
He entered. He stood before me. What his words were you 
can imagine ; his manner you can hardly realize, nor can I 
forget it. He made me, for the first time, feel what it costs a 

man to declare affection when he doubts response The 

spectacle of one, ordinarily so statue-like, thus trembling, 
stirred, and overcome, gave me a strange shock. I could only 
entreat him to leave me then, and promise a reply on the 
morrow. I asked if he had spoken to papa. He said he 
dared not. I think I half led, half put him out of the room." 

So deep, so fervent, and so enduring was the affection Miss 
Bronte had inspired in the heart of this good man ! It is an 
honor to her ; and, as such, I have thought it my duty to say 
thus much, and quote thus fully from her letter about it. And 
now I pass to my second reason for dwelling on a subject 
which may possibly be considered by some, at first sight, of 
too private a nature for publication. When Mr. Nicholls had 
left her, Charlotte went immediately to her father and told him 
all. He always disapproved of marriages, and constantly 
talked against them. But he more than disapproved at this 
time ; he could not bear the idea of this attachment of Mr. 
Nicholls to his daughter. Fearing the consequences of 
agitation to one so recently an invalid, she made haste to give 
her father a promise that, on the morrow, Mr. Nicholls should 



I04 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

have a distinct refusal. Thus quietly and modestly did she, 
on whom such hard judgments had been passed by ignorant 
reviewers, receive this vehement, passionate declaration of 
love — thus thoughtfully for her father, and unselfishly for 
herself, put aside all consideration of how she should reply, 
excepting as he wished ! 

The immediate result of Mr. Nicholls's declaration of attach- 
ment was that he sent in his resignation of the curacy of Ha- 
worth ; and that Miss Bronte held herself simply passive, as 
far as words and actions went, while she suffered acute pain 
from the strong expressions which her father used in speaking 
of Mr. Nicholls, and from the too evident distress and failure 
of health on the part of the latter. Under these circumstances 
she, more gladly than ever, availed herself of Mrs. Smith's 
proposal that she should again visit them in London ; and 
thither she accordingly went in the first week of the year 1853. 

From thence I received the following letter. It is with a 
sad, proud pleasure 1 copy her words of friendship now: 

*^ January 12, 1853. 

** It is with you the ball rests. I have not heard from you 
since I wrote last ; but I thought I knew the reason of your 
silence, viz., application to work — and therefore I accept it, 
not merely with resignation, but with satisfaction. 

** I am now in London, as the date above will show ; staying 
very quietly at my publisher's and correcting proofs, etc. Be- 
fore receiving yours, I had felt, and expressed to Mr. Smith, 
reluctance to come in the way of ^ Ruth' ; not that I think s/ie 
would suffer from contact with * Villette ' — we know not but 
that the damage might be the other way ; but I have ever held 
comparisons to be odious, and would fain that neither I nor my 
friends should be made subjects for the same. Mr. Smith pro- 
poses, accordingly, to defer the publication of my book till the 
24th inst.; he says that will give * Ruth ' the start in the papers, 
daily and weekly, and also will leave free to her all the Feb- 
ruary magazines. Should this deUiy appear to you insufficient, 
speak ! and it shall be protracted. 

*' I dare say, arrange as we may, we shall not be able wholly 
to prevent comparisons ; it is the nature of some critics to be 
invidious ; but we need not care ; we can set them at defiance ; 
they s/ia// not make us foes, they s//a// not mingle with our 
mutual feelings one taint of jealousy : there is my hand on 
that ; I know you will give clasp for clasp. 

" * Villette ' has indeed no right to push itself before * Ruth.' 
There is a goodness, a philanthropic purpose, a social use in 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I05 

the latter, to which the former cannot for an instant pretend ; 
nor can it claim precedence on the ground of surpassing power ; 
I think it much quieter than 'Jane Eyre.' 

*^ I wish to see you^ probably at least as much as you can 
wish to see vie^ and therefore shall consider your invitation for 
March as an engagement ; about the close of that month, 
then, I hope to pay you a brief visit. With kindest remem- 
brances to Mr. Gaskell and all your precious circle, I am," etc. 

'* Villette " — which, if less interesting as a mere story than 
*' Jane Eyre," displays yet more of the extraordinary genius of 
the author — was received with one burst of acclamation. Out 
of so small a circle of characters, dwelHng in so dull and 
monotonous an area as a '^ pension," this wonderful tale was 
evolved ! 

See how she receives the good tidings of her success ! 

*' February 15, 1853. 
**I got a budget of no less than seven papers yesterday and 
to-day. The import of all the notices is such as to make my 
heart swell with thankfulness to Him who takes note both of 
suffering, and work, and motives. Papa is pleased too. As 
to friends in general, I believe I can love them still, without 
expecting them to take any large share in this sort of grati- 
fication. The longer I live, the more plainly I see that gentle 
must be the strain on fragile human nature ; it will not bear 
much." 

Of course, as I draw nearer to the years so recently closed, 
it becomes impossible forme to write with the same fullness of 
detail as I have hitherto not felt it wrong to*' use. Miss Bronte 
passed the winter of 1853-54 in a solitary and anxious manner. 
But the great conqueror Time was slowly achieving his victory 
over strong prejudice and humian resolve. By degrees Mr. 
Bronte became reconciled to the idea of his daughter's mar- 
riage. 

In April she communicated the fact of her engagement to 

Miss W . 

" Haworth, April 12. 

** My dear Miss W.: The truly kind interest which you 
have always taken in my affairs makes me feel that it is due 
to you to transmit an early communication on a subject re- 
specting which I have already consulted you more than once. 



lo6 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

I must tell you then, that since I wrote last, papa's mind has 
gradually come round to a view very different to that which 
he once took ; and that after some correspondence, and as the 
result of a visit Mr. Nicholls paid here about a week ago, it 
was agreed that he was to resume the curacy of Haworth, as 
soon as papa's present assistant is provided with a situation, 
and in due course of time he is to be received as an inmate 
into this house. 

^^ It gives me unspeakable content to see that now my fa- 
ther has once admitted this new view of the case, he dwells on 
it very complacently. In all arrangements, his convenience 
and seclusion will be scrupulously respected. Mr. Nicholls 
seems deeply to feel the wish to comfort and sustain his declin- 
ing years. I think, from Mr. Nicholls's character, I may de- 
pend on this not being a mere transitory, impulsive feeling, but 
rather that it will be accepted steadily as a duty, and discharged 
tenderly as an office of affection. The destiny which Provi- 
dence in his goodness and wisdom seems to offer me will not, 
I am aware, be generally regarded as brilliant, but I trust I 
see in it some germs of real happiness. I trust the demands of 
both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled by 
the step in contemplation. It is Mr. Nicholls's wish that the 
marriage should take place this summer ; he urges the month 
of July, but that seems very soon. 

^'When you write to me, tell me how you are I have 

now decidedly declined the visit to London ; the ensuing three 
months will bring me abundance of occupation ; I could not 

afford to throw away a month Papa has just got a 

letter from the good and dear bishop, w^iich has touched and 
pleased us much ; it expresses so cordial an approbation of 
Mr. Nicholls's return to Haworth (respecting which he was con- 
sulted) and such kind gratification at the domestic arrange- 
ments which are to ensue. It seems his penetration discovered 
the state of things when he was here in June, 1853." 

She expressed herself in other letters, as thankful to One 
w^ho had guided her through much difficulty and much dis- 
tress and perplexity of mind ; and yet she felt what most 
thoughtful women do, who marry when the first flush of care- 
less youth is over, that there was a strange, half-sad feeling, in 
making announcements of an engagement — for cares and fears 
came mingled inextricably with hopes. One great relief to her 
mind at this time was derived from the conviction that her 
father took a positive pleasure in all the thoughts about and 
preparations for her wedding. He was anxious that things 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I07 

should be expedited, and was much interested in every pre- 
liminary arrangement for the reception of Mr. NichoUs into 
the parsonage as his daughter's husband. This step was ren- 
dered necessary by Mr. Bronte's great age and failing sight, 
which made it a paramount obligation, on so dutiful a daughter 
as Charlotte, to devote as much time and assistance as ever in 
attending to his wants. Mr. NichoUs, too, hoped that he 
might be able to add some comfort and pleasure by his ready 
presence, on any occasion when the old clergyman might need 
his services. 

At the beginning of May, Miss Bronte left home to pay 
three visits before her marriage. The first was to us. She 
only remained three days, as she had to go to the neighbor- 
hood of Leeds, there to make such purchases as were required 
for her marriage. Her preparations, as she said, could 
neither be expensive nor extensive ; consisting chiefly in a 
modest replenishing of her wardrobe, some re-papering and 
re-painting in the parsonage ; and above all, converting the 
small flagged passage-room, hitherto used only for stores 
(v/hich was behind her sitting-room), into a study for her hus- 
band. On this idea, and plans for his comfort, as well as her 
father's, her mind dwelt a good deal ; and we talked them 
over with the same unwearying happiness which, I suppose, 
all women feel in such discussions — especially when money 
considerations call for that kind of contrivance which Charles 
Lamb speaks of in his '^ Essay on Old China," as forming so 
great an addition to the pleasure of obtaining a thing at last. 

**Haworth, May 22. 
*^ Since I came home I have been very busy stitching ; the 
little new room is got into order, and the green and white 
curtains are up ; they exactly suit the papering, and look neat 
and clean enough. I had a letter a day or two since, announc- 
ing that Mr. Nicholls comes to-morrow. I feel anxious about 
him ; more anxious on one point than I dare quite express to 
myself. It seems he has again been suffering sharply from his 
rheumatic affection. I hear this not from himself, but from 
another quarter. He was ill while I was in Manchester and 

B . He uttered no complaint to me ; dropped no hint on 

the subject. Alas ! he was hoping he had got the better of it, 
and I know how this contradiction of his hopes will sadden 
him. For unselfish reasons he did so earnestly wish this com- 
plaint might not become chronic. I fear — I fear ; but if he is 
doomed to suffer, so much the more will he need care and help. 
Well ! conie what may, God help and strengthen both him and 



Io8 LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

me ! I look forward to to-morrow with a mixture of impa- 
tience and anxiety." 

It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 
29th of June. Her two friends arrived at Haworth Parsonage 
the day before; and the long summer afternoon and evening 
were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the 
morrow, and for her father's comfort during her absence from 
home. When all was finished, — the trunk packed, the morn- 
ing's breakfast arranged, the wedding-dress laid out, — just 
at bedtime, Mr. Bronte announced his intention of stopping at 
home while the others went to church. What was to be done? 
Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the 
officiating clergyman, the bride and bridegroom, the brides- 
maid, and Miss W present. The Prayer-book was re- 
ferred to; and there it was seen that the Rubric enjoins that 
the Minister shall receive "the woman from her father's or 
friend's hands," and that nothing is specified as to the sex of 
the ''friend" So Miss W -, ever kind in emergency, vol- 
unteered to give her old pupil away. 

The news of the wedding had slipt abroad before the little 
party came out of church, and many old and humble friends 
were there, seeing her look "like a snowdrop," as they say. 
Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, 
and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which perhaps 
might suggest the resemblance to the pale wintry flower. 

Mr. Nicholls and she went to visit his friends and relations 
in Ireland, and made a tour by Killarney, Glengariff, Tar- 
bert, Tralee, and Cork, seeing scenery, of which she says, 
"some parts exceeded all I had ever imagined.". . . . 'Tmust 
say I like my new relations. My dear husband, too, appears 
in a new light in his own country. More than once I have 
had deep pleasure in hearing his praises on all sides. Some 
of the old servants and followers of the family tell me I am a 
most fortunate person ; for that I have got one of the best gentle- 
men in the country I trust I feel thankful to God for 

having enabled me to make what seems a right choice; and I 
pray to be enabled to repay as I ought the affectionate de- 
votion of a truthful, honorable man." 

Henceforward the sacred doors of home are closed upon her 
married life. We, her loving friends, standing outside, caught 
occasional glimpses of brightness, and pleasant peaceful mur- 
murs of sound, telling of the gladness within; and we looked 
at each other, and gently said, "After a hard and long struggle 
• — after many cares and many bitter sorrows — she is tasting 



I 



LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. I09 

happiness now I'' We thought of the slight astringencies of 
her character, and how they would turn to full ripe sweetness 
in that calm sunshine of domestic peace. We remembered her 
trials, and were glad in the idea that God had seen fit to wipe 
away the tears from her eyes. Those who saw her, saw an 
outward change in her look, telling of inward things. And we 
thought, and we hoped, and we prophesied, in our great love 
and reverence. 

Early in the new year (1855) Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls went to 
visit Sir James Kay Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe. They only 
remained two or three days, but it so fell out that she increased 
her lingering cold, by a long walk over damp ground in thin 
shoes. 

Soon after her return, she was attacked by new sensations 
of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness; after this 
state of things had lasted for some time, she yielded to Mr. 
Nicholls' s Avish that a doctor should be sent for. He came, and 
assigned a natural cause for her miserable indisposition ; a little 
patience, and all would go right. She, who was ever patient 
in illness, tried hard to bear up and bear on. But the dreadful 
sickness increased and increased, till the very sight of food 
occasioned nausea. "A wren would have starved on what she 
ate during those last six weeks," says one. Tabby's health 
had suddenly and utterly given way, and she died in this time 
of distress and anxiety respecting the last daughter of the house 
she had served so long. Martha tenderly waited on her mistress, 
and from time to time tried to cheer her with the thought of 
the baby that was coming. *T dare say I shall be glad some 

time," she would say; *'but I am so ill — so weary " Then 

she took to her bed, too weak to sit up. From that last 
couch she wrote two notes in pencil. The first, which has 
no date, is addressed to her own ''Dear Nell." 

'T must write one line out of my dreary bed. The news of 

M 's probable recovery came like a ray of joy to me. I 

am not going to talk of my sufferings — it would be useless and 
painful. I want to give you an assurance, which I know will 
comfort you — and that is, that I find in my husband the 
tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly comfort 
that ever woman had. His patience never fails, and it is tried 
by sad days and broken nights. Write and tell me about 

Mrs. 's case ; how long was she ill, and in what way? Papa — 

thank God! — is better. Our poor old Tabby is dead and 
buried. Give my kind love to Miss \V . May God com- 
fort and help you! *' C. B. Nicholls." 



no LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

r^ 

The other — also in faint, faint pencil marks — was to her 
Brussels schoolfellow. 

** February 15. 

**A few lines of acknowledgment your letter j//^// have, 
whether well or ill. At present I am confined to my bed with 
illness, and have been so for three weeks. Up to this period, 
since my marriage, I have had excellent health. My husband 
and I live at home with my father; of course, I could not 
leave him. He is pretty well, better than last summer. No 
kinder, better husband than mine, it seems to me, there can 
be in the world. I do not want now for kind companionship 
in health and the tenderest nursing in sickness. Deeply I 
sympathize in all you tell me about Dr. W. and your excellent 
mother's anxiety. I trust he will not risk another operation. 
I cannot write more now; for I am much reduced and very 
weak. God bless you all. Yours affectionately, 

^'C. B. NiCHOLLS." 

I do not think she ever wrote a line again. Long days and 
longer nights went by; still the same relentless nausea and 
faintness, and still borne on in patient trust. About the third 
week in March there was a change; a low wandering delirium 
came on; and in it she begged constantly for food and even 
for stimulants. She swallowed eagerly now ; but it was too 
late. Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, 
she saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound 
of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. 
"Oh!" she whispered forth, "I am not going to die, am I ? He 
will not separate us, we have been so happy." 

Early on Saturday morning, March 31, the solemn tolling 
of Haworth church-bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the 
villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts 
shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate 
and alone in the old gray house. 



THE END. 



LBAg14 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

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